Exclusive News for UK Care Workers | Migrant care workers charter

Migrant care workers charter: To safeguard care workers on sponsored UK visas, a union has launched a charter. Salford Council is the first to join the Unison pact, which aims to stop migrant workers from being exploited.

Migrant care workers charter

A historic, grassroots agreement has offered new rights for care workers from nations including Nigeria, the Philippines, and India who risked losing their immigration status in the UK if they quit their employers.

Salford Council is the first in the nation to join the Migrant Care Workers Charter, an agreement created by care workers and the trade union Unison to stop the exploitation of those on sponsored visas.

Having a licensed employer is a requirement for those on post-Brexit sponsored skilled worker and health and care worker visas. They have 60 days to find a new sponsoring employer, apply for a different visa, or leave the country if their job is terminated by the Home Office.

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Care workers who have sacrificed everything to come to the UK, frequently to work with individuals who have complex needs or dementia, are at risk of being taken advantage of by employers who are not closely monitored, according to union organisers.

In order to support care workers who have been victimised or whose immigration status is in jeopardy due to losing their employment due to no fault of their own, signatories, like Salford Council, have committed to identifying or acting as a “employer of last resort” for them. In order to prevent dishonest employers from receiving public funds, signatories also pledge to establish a “ethical recruiter list.”

It follows revelations made by Greater Manchester union officials within the past 12 months.

Before Unison assisted them in finding new employment and obtaining unpaid wages, Nigerian employees at a care facility in Salford faced losing their status in the UK due to the facility’s closure and the sale of the property for development. Additionally, the union has been collaborating with Nigerian carers who work for organisations whose licences were revoked by the Home Office.

Dozens of Indian care workers who had complained about poor pay and working conditions and believed their employers were threatening them because of their illegal status were assisted by officials, a claim their employers deny. Before gaining union recognition, they scheduled meetings at midnight to accommodate their lengthy workdays.

According to Unison president Steve North, the circumstances that certain care workers in the UK are facing are similar to the “Kafala” system that exists in some regions of the Middle East. You must follow instructions because “the company you work for owns you completely, controls your destiny and that of your family, and if you don’t do as you’re told, you risk deportation,” he warned.

The precariousness experienced by workers on sponsored visas is the “biggest issue in adult social care,” according to Idris Kauji, 44, of Preston, an Indian care worker who assisted in creating the charter, who spoke to the Guardian.

According to Matthew Dickinson, a local Unison organiser who assisted foreign care workers in Salford, people were being “duped, paying in some cases £25k” to recruiters before coming only to discover they had no employment or were forced to work for extended periods of time without compensation.

Although the process started in Greater Manchester, care professionals from all over the UK, including 38-year-old Lorato, who arrived in south-west England in 2022 on a sponsored visa from Botswana to work with persons with disabilities, helped develop the charter. Although her employer had promised her a room of her own, she ended up sharing a room with another lady in a two-bedroom flat that could house seven people.

She remarked, “I didn’t feel safe.” After I had to battle for my pay, immigration raided my employer. I only feel like I’ve arrived in England now that my new work pays well.

Paul Dennett, the elected mayor of Salford, said it was a privilege to be the first signatory to a charter that was a “thorough step” in addressing instances of victimisation and persecution that foreign care workers were “experiencing far too frequently.”

In the end, better working conditions for care workers translate into higher standards of care for residents, so he added, “I hope many other local authorities across the country, especially Labour-controlled ones, have a historic responsibility to work hand in hand with trade unions, commit to [it] just as we have, and begin the fightback against the exploitative conditions in this sector.”

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