The workers, who live with clients to provide round-the-clock care, have in some cases had their pay cut by hundreds of pounds a month despite initially only being paid the minimum wage. The practice is revealed in a landmark report published by the University of Nottingham’s Rights Lab, the world’s largest modern slavery research group, based on an 18-month study involving workers in London from countries including Zimbabwe, South Africa, Hungary and Poland. . It found several cases where workers were given “vague pay stubs where the number of hours worked and any deductions were not specified,” including cases where wages appeared to have been illegally withheld. Employers can legally deduct £8.70 a day – up from £5.35 in 2016 – from workers’ pay if they provide accommodation, as can happen with farm workers in rural areas. But Dr Caroline Emberson, who led the research, and Dr Agnes Turnpenny, from the Institute of Public Care at Oxford Brookes University, said it was unethical and “absurd” to charge low-paid workers living in hospitals when jobs they required them to stay in clients’ homes overnight. As well as deductions for living expenses, the investigation found that some workers suffered sexual or racial abuse and were expected to carry out non-caring tasks for the whole family, such as cooking and cleaning. These workers were often left without support from their agencies, which act as intermediaries between workers and clients. Others were given no sick pay or time off, required to work more than 80 hours a week with insufficient breaks and were subject to back pay clauses or exit fees – a practice first revealed by the Observer in March. A care worker said she found caring for vulnerable clients “rewarding” but was left scarred by encounters with a bad employer. “The pay was very low, they charged a lot for accommodation and I was treated very badly. They basically wanted to keep me a slave,” he said. The new research – which also involved academics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the charity Focus on Labor Exploitation (Flex) and paid peer researchers with experience of working in the field themselves – will fuel further concerns about exploitation in social care, which is facing a staffing crisis and increasing cases of modern slavery. It warns that migrant care workers, many of whom are women, are particularly vulnerable to exploitation: describing them as a “hidden workforce” who are often “invisible to the local community” and “unheard” in national policy debates. It calls for a range of policy changes to reduce workers’ vulnerability to labor exploitation, including reform of the restricted visa system, where workers require sponsorship from a specific employer. abolishing or reducing visa fees; and banning or regulating repayment clauses to ensure they are not used to tie workers to their jobs. It also suggests that, like agriculture, health and social care could become a sector licensed by the Gangmasters and Labor Abuse Authority – which would require recruitment agencies to register to offer UK workers, making it easier for employers to identify “fair and safe” recruiters. Another of its recommendations is for the Department of Health to extend the Care Quality Commission’s remit to oversee the employment rights of hospital-based workers. However, the department said it had “no plans” to do so. Emerson said the inquiry showed urgent changes were needed to ensure live-in care workers, many of whom had come to Britain on the promise of good wages and working conditions, were protected. They often found themselves “isolated” in clients’ homes and dependent on agencies to ensure their employment rights were upheld, he said. “These vulnerabilities can make this form of care work a trap where the unscrupulous can keep workers in exploitative situations.” Suzanne Hewitt, a care worker and one of the peer researchers, added that some care workers seemed to be “almost indifferent” to being exploited out of fear or because they believed that if they spoke up, nothing would change. “They are silently stewing in their frustration because all they want to do is take care of the most vulnerable while being vulnerable themselves,” he said.
