As Scotland turns the page on another year, politicians will line up to talk about hope, renewal and a “fairer future.” Yet for tens of thousands of care workers, 2026 begins exactly as the last one ended: on poverty pay, in broken services, and with patience snapped. The warm words have worn thin; anger is now the dominant mood across Scotland’s care workforce. Of the one million workers across the UK who were obliged to work on Christmas Day and the hundreds of thousands who were at work as the New Year dawned, tens of thousands will have been care workers. These were the angels ensuring that who were separated from their families through age or illness over the festive period we safe, well and happy.

These are the workers who kept people alive during the pandemic, who sat at bedsides when families could not, and who now hold together an underfunded system through sheer commitment. Their reward? Stagnant wages, worsening conditions, and a Scottish Government still dragging its heels on the basic changes needed to stop the sector collapsing.

It is a well-established fact that workers whose wages are determined by union bargaining, receive pay and conditions which more closely match their skill and dedication. In a sector such as social care where we have public, voluntary and private care providers, it is vital that workers’ wages improve together. For years, unions have demanded sectoral collective bargaining for social care: a single national table where unions, employers and........

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