Executive Summary
Summary
This report examines how restrictions on migrant workers’ rights fuel exploitation and undermine migrants’ safety and dignity at work. We look at five key areas: the criminalisation of work, the system of work sponsorship, exclusion from the state safety net, lengthy and expensive routes to regular status and a lack of safe reporting pathways.
We also explore the role unions have played, and the importance of building solidarity across the labour and migrant rights movements in order to advance migrant workers’ rights and strengthen labour standards for all.
This report brings together our existing research into the issues affecting migrant workers and undocumented people, combining it with collaborative work and joint briefings with partners, evidence from other organisations with expertise in this area, and data from our immigration advice helpline for UNISON members.
Key Findings
The criminalisation of work
Hostile Environment policies in the workplace, including the Illegal Working Offence and right to work checks, criminalise undocumented people simply for working to support themselves, and drive down safety and conditions for all migrant workers. The criminalisation of work is enforced through racist raids and workplace checks, which harm our workforces and tear communities apart.
The system of work sponsorship
The UK’s system of work sponsorship is inherently exploitative. It ties workers to their employers and makes it extremely difficult to leave or change jobs, as their right to remain in the UK is dependent on their sponsor. Since Brexit, the UK Government has increased the use of restrictive, temporary work visas in sectors like care and farming, further fuelling exploitation and putting people at risk of being made undocumented.
Exclusion from the state safety net
The ‘No Recourse to Public Funds’ condition excludes most migrants from accessing state support in times of difficulty, trapping people in exploitative and dangerous conditions, both at work and at home.
Routes to regularisation
The UK’s hostile and complex immigration system creates precarity, trapping people on long expensive routes to settlement and, too often, making people undocumented. Once undocumented it is extremely difficult to get back to secure status, as routes to regularisation are so lengthy and complex, leaving subject to Hostile Environment policies for years and sometimes decades on end.
Safe reporting pathways
In the UK, immigration enforcement is prioritised above workers’ safety and wellbeing. Data is routinely shared between workplace inspectorates / the police and Immigration Enforcement, making it impossible for migrant workers to cooperate with inspectors. This heightens the risks of exploitation for migrant workers, and drives down workplace conditions for all of us.
The role of unions
Migrants are and always have been a central part of our workforce and labour rights movement. Yet their involvement has often come at great personal sacrifice due to barriers which too often make it impossible to join a union or take part in industrial action. Increasingly, unions are taking action to advance migrants’ rights, but there is still a long way to go until all workers can access the support and protections afforded by unions.
Recommendations
All workers need decent pay, safe workplaces and the means to change jobs and get support if they are exploited, no matter what papers they hold. This report lays out how to get there.
- Ensure everyone has the right to work through abolishing the Illegal Working Offence and right to work checks
- Scrap the system of work sponsorship and ensure all work visas come with the option to safely change jobs and a pathway to permanent settlement.
- Ensure everyone can access state support in times of difficulty.
- Introduce a straightforward route to regularisation based on five years residence, and support people to maintain secure status once they have it.
- Establish safe reporting pathways through ending data sharing between labour inspectorates and the police with immigration enforcement.
- Remove barriers which prevent migrants from joining a union and accessing its support.
- Listen to and be led by the views of migrant workers when developing policies which impact them.
