We are Greater Manchester’s care and support workers. We work within care homes, homecare and supported living services across our city’s ten boroughs to provide exceptional care for Greater Manchester’s most vulnerable residents.
We care for Greater Manchester. We have worked tirelessly during the pandemic to keep Greater Manchester safe and healthy, often at great personal cost. But does Greater Manchester care about us?
We have cared for elderly and disabled people suffering with COVID-19. We have been with Greater Manchester’s elderly residents when no-one else could visit them. We have put ourselves and our families at risk by working on the frontline during the pandemic, often without adequate resources or proper sick pay.
We feel undervalued, underappreciated and underpaid. Thousands of care and support workers across our city are paid less than the Foundation Living Wage (£9.90).
We do some of the hardest and most important work in Greater Manchester – yet many of us are struggling to make ends meets. Care and support workers across all ten boroughs of Greater Manchester have been forced to visit food banks, to use pay day loans and to take on second or even third jobs.
We are now being asked to pay for the crisis in social care through an increase in our National Insurance contributions. It will mean another pay cut for frontline staff, whilst many of our employers continue to profit from the pandemic.
This can’t be allowed to continue. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has called for care and support workers to receive a “massive pay rise” and has committed to push for all Greater Manchester councils, NHS Trusts and at least thirty social care providers to pay the Foundation Living Wage within the next three years.
It’s time to turn these ambitions into reality. We are key workers. We are Greater Manchester’s care and support workers. And we demand a pay rise.
Our Demands
We call on Greater Manchester’s ten local authorities (Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan) to require the Foundation Living Wage as a minimum starting salary for all directly employed and commissioned care and support workers.
We call on Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham to work with us to deliver the Foundation Living Wage as a minimum starting salary for all of Greater Manchester's care and support workers.
And we call on members of the public to hold local councillors to account and stand with us in our campaign for a pay rise.