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CARE workers who have to self-isolate in Wales will not get their sick pay topped up from the end of this month, the Welsh government has announced.
Public service union Unison said thousands of its members in Wales are now under threat from poverty and expanding bills after the decision.
The sick pay measures were put in place during the pandemic to help care workers to stop working and self-isolate if they had coronavirus.
The union said that more than 60 per cent of care in Wales is delivered by the private sector, where workers are often not given sick pay.
Unison Wales head of social care Mark Turner said: “This latest decision will cause impossible dilemmas for care workers in the private and third sector in Wales during the coming winter.
“If there is another, more transmissible or more severe new strain of the virus, tens of thousands of already low paid care workers will face a double whammy of the cost-of-living crisis and being plunged into greater poverty simply because they are ill, or to protect our vulnerable.
“It’s not sustainable and it’s not acceptable.”