The forgotten third: migrant care workers' views on improving conditions in England's adult social care sector

By Adis Sehic, Dora-Olivia Vicol, Andrei Savitski - 12 November 2024

With one of the highest vacancy rates of any major industry, successive governments have looked to migrant workers to plug labour shortages in the adult social care sector. Today migrant workers make up 32% of care worker roles in England. Many are working on a Health and Care Worker Visa, a visa category introduced post-Brexit which effectively ties migrant workers to their employers. 

It is well established that England’s adult social care sector is facing significant challenges, and governments have flagged the need to reform the sector. However, how these challenges play out for migrant care workers who face additional issues is frequently overlooked. As the government prepares to embark on the most wide-ranging employment rights reform in a generation, including instituting a Negotiating Body and a Fair Pay Agreement for the adult social care sector, this report aims to plug the gap in migrant worker representation. Download the report

Our findings

Drawing on 21 interviews and 71 survey responses with migrant care workers, we find that migrant care workers are facing acute pressures: 

• Unsustainable working hours. More than half (55%) of survey respondents were  dissatisfied with their work schedules. Interviewees revealed a toxic dynamic  whereby working hours were either all-consuming, with little time for family and  self-care, or low and unpredictable, with barely enough hours to cover living costs. 
• Low levels of pay. Three quarters (75%) of survey respondents were unhappy or  very unhappy with levels of pay, and almost half (45%) of those who needed to  drive between appointments were unpaid for travel time. Interviewees reported  experiencing a demoralising cycle of financial insecurity, which failed to represent  the complexity and social value of their work, and made it difficult to imagine  staying in the sector long-term. 
• Persistent breaches of employment rights. Nearly two thirds (65%) of survey  respondents disclosed an alleged employment rights breach in the last 12 months,  including health and safety breaches, bullying, and discrimination. More than a  third (39%) of these respondents did not raise a complaint with their employer or  make a report to an external agency, and interviewees reported that social  pressure, mistrust of authorities, and fear of employer retaliation left them  disempowered to raise grievances. 
• A punitive visa regime. Research participants on the Health and Care Worker visa  were particularly at risk. Interviewees feared that reporting their employers to  authorities risked having their visa curtailed, and several carers described  instances where employers used the threat of visa curtailment to silence  grievances. Switching out of exploitative work situations was also problematic. While many workers (38) had tried to find a new sponsor, fewer than half (16) were  successful.

This is supplemented by a large-scale analysis by Violation Tracker UK of companies registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and licensed by the Home Office to sponsor migrant workers. The data reveals that the Home Office granted sponsorship licences to at least 177 companies that have a recent record of labour violations and were found by Employment Tribunals, the Health and Safety Executive, or the NMW Enforcement team to have broken labour standards. Unfair dismissal was the most common violation, followed by unauthorised deductions from wages and discrimination. 

Our recommendations

To help raise employment standards for migrant care workers and improve the sustainability of the adult social care sector as a whole, we recommend that the government pursues two major strands of reform:

Sectoral reform, which should start by including migrants’ voices in the planned Negotiating Body responsible for the Fair Pay Agreement. We are also calling on the government to tackle key issues around pay, training, career progression frameworks, and regular hours of work. With their pay eaten away by driving between appointments, unpaid overtime, and a lack of sick pay for short illnesses, these historic injustices must be fixed. 

Immigration system reform, which is urgently needed to address the power imbalance between employers and migrant visa workers. Despite suffering persistent abuses of their rights, many sponsored workers we heard from felt unable to report their employer out of fear of retaliation. They must be empowered to report non-compliance, leave exploitative roles, and take their labour to businesses that need and value them. An end to the sponsorship system would be the most effective way to achieve this, but at a minimum, the Home Office should give visa workers more time to change sponsors, and ensure that those who suffered exploitation are given the unrestricted right to work to prevent re-exploitation and destitution.

The adult social care sector is at a pivotal moment. It is essential that the experiences and specific issues faced by migrant workers in the sector are addressed head on, rather than assumed to have been resolved through general reform measures. To learn how, read our report. Download the report

For media enquiries, contact our Senior Communications Officer, Evie Breese: evie.breese@workrightscentre.org

Join us for a presentation and Q&A with the report authors and a migrant care worker with experience of exploitation under the work sponsorship on Thursday 14 November 15:00 - 16:00 via Zoom. Register for your free ticket via Eventbrite. 

 

← News