By Bill Heaney
I think I have told you this before in this column. My granny used to be a carer, or a home help as they were called in the 1950s.
I remember her in her council-issue green overall, after having made the breakfast for her shipyard worker husband and their sons and daughters – and grandchildren – going out to catch the 134 bus from the bottom of Brucehill to Helensburgh in the morning.
Often she would go to “confinements,” mothers who had or were awaiting their babies to arrive, or old and vulnerable people whom she helped to wash and feed.
I expect some of them had dementia, but that was a word I never heard of at that time.
Her job was peripatetic – she travelled from one assignment to another to streets up and down Sinclair Street to visit Red Towers and other big houses owned by hotel owners, whisky magnates to biscuit millionaires.
Why people in that social bracket with that sort of wealth received council home help services I have no idea, but they did at that time.
My granny did their family washing, including the baby’s nappies, and some cooking and helped to bathe babies and small children and get them out to school.
And she seemed to be able to cram all that into a single morning between 9am and 1pm. She was deemed part-time, but she often stayed on longer and cleaned the house, hung out washing and whatever else needed doing.
I believe she even paid her own bus fares, but I’m not certain about that.
I have been thinking about my granny in recent weeks during the industrial action by women council workers for equal pay with men, and how they have had to make their case by taking part in marches with placards pleading for a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.
Now that’s not right, is it? Not in the 21st century, it’s not. Not in any century for that matter.
I was dismayed that our care workers did not receive the respect they deserve for what they do.
And I was angry when I was told that council officials were phoning the women up to pull at their heart strings and better nature in order to persuade them not to take part in the strikes, which will be taking place again this week.
Would they not take part, please? Would they not leave their vulnerable clients home alone and lonely, even if it was only for a day? Would old folk have to make their own dinner? Would the office staff not have to go to a lot of bother to make alternative arrangements to provide cover for those who chose to take part on the picket lines?
What I want to know is if the Labour councillors elected by the community to run West Dunbartonshire Council knew this was happening.
If they did, surely they didn’t agree with it?
They would not be two-faced enough to pay poverty wages to their workers when they were themselves forever complaining about the Cost of Living Crisis, and they are on between £25,000 and £50,000 a year plus extras and expenses. The chief executive receives a package of around £150,000 a year and there are others on £100,000.
When old folk were having to go for warmth to local church halls the like where the heating was on. Where elderly and vulnerable people were having to choose between heating and eating. When some families were being left without the price of a loaf or a pint of milk?
Looking at the demonstration by GMB union care workers outside the council’s Burgh Hall headquarters I didn’t see any councillors – apart from the Community Party’s Jim Bollan – giving support for the women workers’ case fror equal pay.
And out at Balloch Library, which is closing for the want of a pittance in council support, there were councillors glaring and sneering at members of the press and public who turned up in the public gallery to support a petition from 1,500 people, of all ages from the elderly to the very young to keep the place open.
Then I saw the advertisement below on Facebook which underscored for me the fact that care workers get an awful lot to do for little reward. That they deserve any increase in wages, every penny and pound coming their way.
Since councillors themselves receive remuneration for the (modest) work they do, I am looking forward to Wednesday and Thursday this week to seeing our elected repreentatives out on the Church Street pavement supporting our care workers. Be there between 8 and 10am.
There is no way West Dunbartonshire Council council can support the SNP’s budget cuts. There is no way they should ever be able to show their faces again at people’s doors when they are canvassing for votes at an election.
This was the advertisment for a personal care worker. Only the names been changed to protect the innocent from the hang ’em, birch ’em and boil ’em in oil brigade waiting to ban and take sanctions against anyone who disagrees with them.