2024 Impact at a glance
With reports of migrant worker exploitation in the care sector on the rise, four major immigration policy changes, and a general election, 2024 has been an incredibly busy year for the Work Rights Centre.
Our frontline team of experts and legal advisers supported 1,077 clients with questions that straddled employment rights, immigration, and employability. Separately, our policy team worked tirelessly to expose the risks faced by migrants and vulnerable workers, and advocate for stronger protections - not least by publishing a new major report on exploitation in the care sector, and influencing the new Employment Rights Bill.
This is a summary of what we’re up against and what we achieved this year. To support our work, please consider donating today.
Employment rights advice demand reveals issues in care and agriculture
In 2024 we received 344 new employment rights enquiries. Just under half of those (43%) were from migrant workers employed in care and agriculture, reflecting both the scale of non-compliance in these sectors and the associated visa schemes, and the charity’s own profile with workers and other community organisations.
The issues raised by our clients paint an interesting picture. In addition to cases of non-payment, discrimination, and dismissal, in 2024 as many as 43 people raised the issue of non-provision of work coupled with non-payment of salary. In almost every instance, these were migrant care workers whose visas were tied to their employer, and who had limited right to work elsewhere.
Many of them had paid large fees to obtain what they believed was a genuine job. The employer’s refusal to provide work, or pay wages, was not just a breach of their employment contract, but a major source of stress, debt, financial precarity, and risk of losing their immigration status. As we show in the next section, this is a risk inherent in the design of the work migration system, and we campaign vigorously for policy changes to mitigate it.
In 2024 we supported 57 people on the Seasonal Worker Scheme (SWS) with employment rights breaches. The SWS was introduced to plug labour shortages in the horticultural sector and gives migrants the opportunity to work for up to six months in the UK.
Despite the expectation that work would be provided for the entire six months, and the efforts that most migrants make to secure the visa (including taking out loans to cover travel costs), many were provided with significantly shorter work contracts, and were refused a transfer to another farm by their visa operator.
The issue of transfers was by far the most common concern, raised by 33 clients in this group. Other issues reported to our team included unauthorised deductions from wages (15 clients) and dismissals (11 clients).
Immigration advice shows risk inherent in employer-sponsored visas, impact of changes to Ukrainian visa schemes, and eVisas effect
The immigration enquiries we received in 2024 reflect the many immigration policy changes announced that year. Of the 653 clients who contacted our immigration advice team, as many as 15% were on the employer-sponsored Health and Care Worker visa. Clients were concerned about how the actions of their sponsors (including non-provision of work or exploitation) would affect their immigration status, and worried about how they might secure their stay in the UK.
Another notable group were people with status under one of the Ukraine visa schemes. On 19 February 2024, without warning and effective immediately, the government drastically reduced eligibility for the Homes for Ukraine Scheme and closed the Ukraine Family Scheme, while also announcing the closure of the Ukraine Extension Scheme from 16 May 2024.
We took a leading role in documenting the risks inherent in those changes, with a research report illustrating the impact on Ukrainian nationals in the UK, and a joint submission to the Secondary Legislation Committee together with the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, arguing the government broke parliamentary procedure by not submitting the changes to formal consultation.
This consultation and the government’s response resulted in the Committee triggering a rare oral scrutiny session of the Home Office, in which the poor quality of the department’s impact information was discussed. We also brought a legal challenge against the government, which at the time of writing remains ongoing. We expect to see an increase in enquiries about the Ukraine Visa Schemes in 2025, as hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians will need to apply for the new Ukraine Permission Extension (UPE) scheme to extend their stay in the UK.
More recently, as the government announced the transition to a fully digital immigration status, our immigration team has been hearing from people concerned about this transition. In 2024 we received 97 enquiries about eVisas. In particular, we provided guidance on a system glitch in early autumn, whereby many people on the Ukraine Visa Schemes had their immigration status misrepresented. To cope with the volume of enquiries, we also published a new online eVisas guide, which includes information about organisations funded by the Home Office to provide this type of assistance.
Almost half of employability clients were migrant care workers
Our employability service in Manchester received 185 enquiries this past year. Nearly half of these (44%) came from migrants on the Health and Care Worker visa, many of whom were desperate to leave their employer and find new work in the social care sector. Because migrants’ immigration and employment situations affect the job search process, our employability team closely coordinated their work with our employment and immigration advisers.
The employability support we provide is also sensitive to clients’ vulnerabilities, such as IT literacy, knowledge of English, and immigration status.These vulnerabilities create additional barriers to accessing decent employment, which we helped them navigate. Notably, this included a number of clients with recent experience of homelessness and single parents of young children.