Care workers who often incurred big debts to come to the UK are still routinely underpaid and mistreated despite government efforts to address labour abuses in the sector, according to research by Britain’s biggest union.
More than a quarter of migrant care staff were paid less than the statutory hourly minimum of £11.44, according to a Unison survey of 3,000 workers published on Tuesday, and more than half were not paid for time travelling between visits, a legal requirement.
A third said they had been threatened with dismissal if they complained about pay, hours, poor accommodation or working conditions, and then risked deportation unless they found another employer to sponsor a visa.
“Going back was not an option,” said Isioma, a 42-year-old who sold her house and belongings in Nigeria to come to the UK in 2022, when the government first opened the visa system to lower-paid care workers.
She paid inflated fees of £7,500 to secure a job but found herself sharing a three-bedroom house with 8 others and working fewer hours than promised, earning just £100 in her first month
“The first three months were hellish,” said Isioma, who stayed with her bullying employer for a further two years before she was able to fund her own training to secure a better job. Even after leaving her previous role, she spoke to the Financial Times under a pseudonym for fear of reprisals.
Unison said the design of the visa system left vulnerable workers reliant on their employer’s sponsorship and made this kind of exploitation all but inevitable in a sector notorious for low pay and poor practice.
“Care staff who come here from overseas are shoring up a crumbling sector,” said Christina McAnea, Unison’s general secretary, urging the government to overhaul the visa system.
A surge in overseas recruitment in care was a big factor fuelling record net immigration of more than 900,000 to the UK in the year to June 2023.
Monthly applications for care visas have since fallen sharply, from more than 18,000 at the peak to about 2,000 recently. This slide began before a ban on care workers bringing family to the UK took effect and reflects tougher scrutiny of visa applications by the Home Office.
At the same time, the government has been trying to help migrant workers whose employers have lost their licence to sponsor visas, with a £16mn fund set up to help them find new roles.
But Unison’s survey — which echoes the findings of a recent report by the Low Pay Commission, an adviser to ministers on the minimum wage — suggests that efforts to curb widely reported labour abuses have not made much difference on the ground.
Both unions and employers are calling for wider reform of the sector, saying that the way local authorities award contracts to the lowest bidder is rewarding rogue operators who undercut responsible employers.
Jane Towson, chief executive of the Homecare Association, which represents providers, said that when the visa route opened in 2022, the Home Office was “handing out sponsor licences like Smarties” to providers that had only just set up.
As a result, many employers did not have enough work for the staff they had hired and ended up bidding for contracts below the cost of provision.
Towson said the Home Office had now gone to the other extreme, refusing sponsorship requests unless providers could give unfeasible cast-iron guarantees there would be work available.
“It’s gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. No one can hire anybody,” she said.
The government said it was “deeply concerned” about the report’s findings and would take a “zero-tolerance approach” to labour exploitation.
It had already set out “first steps” to ban rogue employers from sponsoring overseas workers, and would help any care workers affected find alternative employment, the government added.