"Several governments across Europe promised, or even gave, ‘danger money' bonuses for frontline workers in health and social care as the pandemic gathered strength. Such bonuses can only treat the symptom not the cause, however. Bonuses and even higher wages come nowhere near addressing the fundamental concerns of care workers that go well beyond remuneration. If longstanding non-remuneration issues in the care sector – insufficient funding, marketisation and privatisation, the brain drain and understaffing – remain unsolved, then fresh labour unrest in the care sector in post-pandemic Europe is scarcely avoidable. An analysis of the dynamics and patterns of unrest in health and social care prior to Covid-19 makes this clear."

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