TUC general secretary PAUL NOWAK speaks to the Morning Star’s Berny Torre about the increasing frustration the trade union movement feels at a government that promised change, but has been too slow to bring it about
Care workers need action now
Despite several inquiries and reviews, conditions for social care workers in Scotland are stagnating instead of improving — we need state intervention to deliver the long overdue improvements, writes LILIAN MACER
An elderly person at a charity tea party in London, February 23, 2014
DIANE ABBOTT exposes the misconceptions, rumours and downright lies perpetrated around immigration issues
With 12,000 fewer teachers since 2010 and dwindling resources, Scotland’s schools desperately need investment to support diverse learners rather than empty promises from politicians, writes ANDREA BRADLEY
Reversing outsourcing is the pre-election promise the government must honour, says Unison general secretary CHRISTINA McANEA
EMAN ABU ZAYED reminisces about the perilous time her family and neighbours endured in northern Gaza and how they were forced, in fear of their lives, to flee south
The EIS president who defended Marxist politics in the 1980s fought Thatcherite educational policies while organising Teachers for Peace rallies and ensuring Morning Star circulation in Scotland’s pit villages and factories, writes JOHN FOSTER
IT HAS been five years since the Fair Work Convention’s (FWC) inquiry into social care on behalf of the STUC and the findings were published. Since then we have had a pandemic, the Scottish government’s own independent review into adult social care chaired by Derek Feeley (2021), and three years of working groups, but little or no progress for the workers.
Both the FWC and Feeley report agreed the gains made in 2016 and 2017 in implementing the Scottish living wage as a minimum for care workers across Scotland in adult social care, then ensuring the implementation of that across even the most reluctant of employers was a significant achievement.
However, both inquiries collected powerful testimony from the workers that paying the living wage alone would not solve the systemic issues facing the social care workforce of insecure contracts, poor shift notice, short staffing, and undervaluation of the work of care. Pay and the terms and conditions of care workers must change.
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Tackling poverty in Scotland cannot happen without properly funded public services. Unison is leading the debate
Unison Scotland gathers for its Scottish council today. Regional secretary LILIAN MACER outlines the union’s alternative to the Scottish government’s failing national care service legislation
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Tackling poverty in Scotland cannot happen without properly funded public services. Unison is leading the debate
Falling short of what was promised: many of the new rights in the Employment Rights Bill have defects or escape loopholes that all need addressing, writes LORD JOHN HENDY KC
