The stark reality for migrant workers in the UK is that they are under-protected by our employment rights framework and victimised by our immigration rules.
Migrant social care workers are particularly vulnerable to this kind of ill-treatment because of the hostile environment in which they find themselves and any worker who challenges bad practices by their employer puts their ability to live and work in the UK at great risk. This is a real danger in a sector with high levels of staff turnover. It is fragmented and privatised – characterised by many small employers running on very tight profit margins, some of which is extracted from the companies for shareholder dividends.
At the heart of this problem are the powers that employers are given by our visa system. As the visa sponsor, unscrupulous employers have ultimate power over migrant care workers because their work visa is tied to their employment status; if they lose their job, they will lose the right to work and live in the UK.
The only way to avoid this currently is if they can find another job with an eligible social care employer within 60 days, but records show that only 5% of affected workers are able to achieve this.
Within our economy, the care sector is one of the most precarious in the UK. Firms regularly go under or lose their council contracts. The consequence is staff find themselves without work and in financial hardship.
Workers are therefore fearful of raising concerns about employment practices because they know the same employers can remove their visa sponsorship. Workers are not only risking deportation by speaking up or challenging the employer; many face total financial ruin in their home country because they’ve sold all they have to come here and illegal recruitment fees demanded by predatory recruitment agencies are rife.
According to the Work Rights Centre, 1 in 3 on the Health and Care Worker Visa said they had to pay a large recruitment fee to secure their sponsorship. The value of fees averaged around £11,000.
The latest report from the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority indicates that the care sector is the most reported sector for labour exploitation – making up 60% of all reports.
The Care Quality Commission has also noted that workers are being exploited through the immigration system and research last year by the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre found that the current visa system creates a situation of hyper-insecurity which increases their vulnerability to exploitation. Workers routinely suffer low wages, high recruitment fees, inappropriate salary deductions and the threat of deportation.
Many sponsors have failed to meet their promises of providing adequate hours, leaving workers in precarious situations. This not only undermines their rights, but often subjects them to poor working conditions and substandard housing. Some of the stories these workers tell are truly heartbreaking and highlight clear violations of the Modern Slavery Act.
Government interventions to address these issues so far have failed. In 2023, the then government announced that care providers could only sponsor migrant workers if they were undertaking activities regulated by the CQC, but this failed to recognise that many registered companies were already exploiting their workers.
A rematching programme in 2024 to help workers find another sponsored role when things went wrong is also symbolic of acting after the problem has arisen, rather than seeking to change the very structure of the system – and stricter licensing requirements and greater sanctions, whilst welcome, do not address the fundamental power imbalance at the heart of the employee sponsorship system.
The government therefore needs to urgently review the visa sponsorship relationship with the employer in the social care sector.
Moving towards a sector-wide sponsorship scheme run by an independent body, such as the fair pay agency proposed in the Employment Rights Bill, would enable overseas staff to leave bad employers and find work with better ones. A sector wide sponsorship means that workers and employers would not incur new costs every time a worker moved jobs. This would alleviate the pressure on the worker and reduce the impetus from some employers to enforce “repayment clauses” when workers try and move on.
Any visa scheme reform will stand and fall on whether they enable overseas workers to live their life free of exploitation. This requires a fundamental shift in our immigration rules – so that the hostile environment is replaced with a rights-based framework where migrant workers are treated with dignity and respect.
Overseas workers are playing a vital role in keeping the social care sector running – they deserve better protections and treatment.
A Certificate of Common Sponsorship would protect overseas workers who keep our social care sector running
