Today, Ealing Council has reaffirmed its commitment to increasing the number of Living Wage employers in Ealing to 200, ensuring that Ealing Council achieves ‘Living Wage place’ status, and as of today has ensured that home care workers are paid the London Living Wage.
To mark the occasion, the Living Wage celebration will take place this evening at Southall Community College at 6pm, hosted in partnership with Ealing Citizens.
Living Wage Business Relief discount
The leader of the council, Peter Mason said: “This is a significant step forward in delivering the council objectives of creating good jobs and tackling inequality. Since July, we’re requiring that businesses who wish to work with Ealing Council ensure that their staff employed on contracts with us are paid the London Living Wage as a minimum.
“And we’ve introduced the Living Wage Business Relief discount, encouraging more local businesses to benefit from becoming a living wage accredited employer. And, as of today, we will be adopting the real living wage for homecare workers.
“This uplift in wages will meet the Real Living Wage of £11.05 per hour, an independently set rate that reflects the real cost of living in the capital. We are also committed to increasing this next year and meet the Real Living Wage of £11.95 per hour in May 2023.
“We’re enormously proud of this uplift, which will make a huge difference to the lives of home care workers in Ealing.”
An important step forward
Councillor Josh Blacker, cabinet member for healthy lives added: “This is an important step forward in fulfilling our pledge to fix social care and support the wellbeing of home care workers and the valuable work they do.
“The uplift comes as part of our pledge to invest an additional £8million in adult social care, ensuring workers providing care to residents in their own home will finally be paid the Real Living Wage.”
Councillors visit Care Choices in Southall
Both Councillor Peter Mason and Josh Blacker visited Care Choices last week, an independent living accommodation in Southall, where they spoke with Senior Home Care Worker Ricky Bubb about the uplift and what it means to him, his colleagues and the sector.
Ricky spoke about the difficulties they went through during COVID-19 and issues with staff retention, due to the minimum wage. He told us how the uplift in pay to home care providers will now match the wages of supermarket staff and enable the care sector to recruit and retain the staff they need.
He explains how it will provide more of an incentive and make it possible for people who want to work in the care sector to be able to: “They might actually want to be a care worker, a care worker might be something that they are more suitable to…
“We might be able to get more quality people in, because people have more incentive to come and work in this sector.”
The Real Living Wage is an hourly rate that is set independently to allow for London weighting and is separate from the UK government’s National Living Wage. It is calculated by the living wage foundation according to the cost of living in the UK and adjusted annually.
