Hinckley Councillor attends national conference for Care Workers and urges residents to back campaign

A Hinckley County and Borough Councillor has attended a national online conference in support of Care Workers and urged residents to back a campaign to support them.

Hinckley Lib Dem County and Borough Councillor Michael Mullaney attended the online Pay Fair for Care Day conference. It was attended by numerous figures in social and health care including former Health Secretaries Stephen Dorrell and Jeremy Hunt and representatives from Age UK, the National Care Association, Mencap and numerous other care organisations and Unions.

The campaign aims to ensure all care workers are paid the Real Living Wage of £9.50 an hour. Michael Mullaney said "I have spoken to many hard-working care workers here in Hinckley who do tremendous work, made even more difficult and risky during this Covid-19 pandemic. Despite doing this essential work care workers are often paid really poorly. Three-quarters of carers earn less than the Real Living Wage, a quarter are on Zero Hours contracts, whilst thousands often don't receive pay for all the hours they work.

"In the past I've been a care worker so I understand personally what a tough, yet poorly paid job it is. I recently took the case of paying care workers the Real Living Wage to Leicestershire County Council where I put a motion to the County Council calling for carers to get this support.

"The Pay Fair for Care Day was an excellent conference that united people from across the health and social care world in support of paying our essential care workers a fair wage. Hopefully we will get to the point where as a society we pay care workers a wage that reflects the crucial work they do.

"I would urge local residents to back the campaign. People can sign the petition calling for Fair Pay for Care workers at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/561831 and people can sign up online to back the Carers campaign at https://futuresocialcarecoalition.org/"