Do you want to end the tying of domestic workers to their employers?

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ITV’s Exposure programme ‘Britain’s Secret Slaves’ shown on the 19th January 2015 highlights the real impacts of tying migrant domestic workers to their employers.

Please consider writing to your MP and asking them where they stand on this issue. Kalayaan would be grateful to see copies of any replies you receive.

If you don’t know who your MP is you can find out here

You are welcome to adapt and use the template letter below.

XXXXXXX MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

Dear XXXXXX MP,

Britain’s Secret Slaves: Migrant domestic workers
You may have seen ITV’s recent Exposure programme ‘Britain’s Secret Slaves’ which examined the situation of migrant domestic workers in the UK. The programme found that the result of changes to the visa system introduced in April 2012 is that migrant domestic workers are vulnerable to shocking exploitation and are criminalised when they escape.
The current system requires domestic workers to enter on a six month tied visa which prohibits them leaving their employer, no matter how they are treated. It replaces a system which had been recognised both nationally and internationally as providing vital protection to migrant domestic workers.
Since domestic workers have been tied to employers reported exploitation to the NGO Kalayaan has increased including;
• workers having no time off (79%),
• having their passports taken from them (78%),
• Not allowed out of the house unaccompanied (71%), and
• being paid little or nothing (60% paid less than £50/ week).

Physical, psychological and sexual abuse is also reported. This treatment is illegal in the UK yet as the workers cannot leave and go to the authorities – because to do so will immediately make them illegal immigrants – the employers are getting away with it.
The original migrant domestic worker visa worked well. Domestic workers were recognised as workers under UK law and could leave an employer. They had no recourse to public funds and work was limited to one full time job as a domestic worker in a private household. This meant there was no reason to leave unless working conditions were poor.
The Modern Slavery Bill as it stands currently provides no meaningful protections for migrant domestic workers. The Joint Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill recently described the 2012 tied visa as unintentionally strengthening the hand of the slave master against the victim of slavery and stated that ‘the moral case for revisiting this issue is urgent and overwhelming. Protecting these victims does not require primary legislation and we call on the Government to take immediate action.’ Unbelievably the Government have rejected this recommendation.
I would like to know where you, my MP, stand on this issue. Please would you reassure me that you oppose the current system and support the Joint Committee’s recommendation to reverse the tied visa and to reintroduce the rights of migrant domestic workers in the UK?
Yours sincerely,
xxxxx

Exposure: Britain’s Secret Slaves.

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ITV
Factual

You can watch Britain’s Secret Slaves again here

TX: 10.35pm on Monday January 19, 2015
This is a Hardcash production for ITV

“It was like a hell. She treat me as a slave. Not like a human being, I was treated like an animal. It was hard. But I stayed for my son.” – Elizabeth, domestic worker

Exposure delves into the world of modern slavery – and finds it alive and well in some of London’s most exclusive streets.

Featuring testimony from women who are forced to work up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week for as little as 50 pence an hour, this programme provides a close insight into the conditions of domestic workers brought into the country by their wealthy foreign employers.

Reporter Julie Etchingham finds that many of the women report physical and psychological abuse, despite the fact they are meant to be protected by British law while working here.

Because of recent changes in visa laws, the women have no legal status if they leave the families who employ them. The programme discovers how those who escape from abusive employers are exploited by criminals who draw them into a murky underworld of fake passports, false visas, and illegal employment.

One case study the team found during its 12-month investigation, ‘Ira’, says she was brought to the UK under the new system, to care for her employers’ child at a London hospital. Back in Saudi Arabia she worked up to 20 hours a day and had to ask permission to brush her teeth and go to the toilet. In the UK she explains this got worse.

She says: “They treat me as like a prisoner. They never ever give me even a single pound to buy my own food, even my personal things. Especially one time I have monthly period here I [had to] use only the nappy of a boy.”

The UK has legal obligations to protect domestic workers from abuse. The Government says it does this by ensuring women are given information by British officials about their rights in the UK. Another woman, ‘Davina’, says she was given no information and once in the UK lived in fear of her employer.

She says: “He says, ‘I can kill you.’ I was scared maybe he will do something, he will really kill me. I cannot sleep thinking about maybe one day I will die here.”

The programme discovers it is not just women working for private households who are suffering abuse. ‘Sarah’ says she was locked inside her employer’s apartment, forced to work 18 hours a day for a diplomat who withheld her wages.

She says: “I’m scared because he’s a diplomat, that’s what I’m scared of. He can do whatever he want to do, as he has immunity under the law. It’s really a slavery, the thing that my employer did to me.”

In April 2012, in an effort to cut immigration numbers, the Government changed the visa system so women were tied to the employers who brought them in. If they run away, they now find themselves at risk of deportation – and critics have compared this process to the ‘kafala’ system used by many Middle Eastern and Gulf countries, which essentially makes domestic workers the property of their employers.

Kate Roberts, a Community Advocate at Kalayaan, a charity that supports overseas domestic workers, says: “To put vulnerable women in a position where they are enslaved in the UK is completely disproportionate to the Government’s aims of controlling immigration. It’s completely contradictory to have removed a visa system which was shown to work well and replace it with one that, that has been condemned by human rights groups as a model tying these workers to their employers.”

One woman, too terrified to go on camera, recorded a secret diary for the programme. It reveals that she was brought here two years ago by a wealthy family from the United Arab Emirates who stopped paying her, and she fled with only the clothes she was wearing. She discovered she had no legal right to change employers and had to go on to the black market to find a job illegally.

She writes: “I am tired but I want job. I want money for my family. Only me work. I have three brother. Have three sisters. Small sister married and husband not work. She is always sick also. Another big sister. Her husband die. I am so tired but I can’t do anything. Because everybody ask for papers.”

The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has said that abolishing modern slavery in Britain is a personal priority. Marissa Begonia, who helps runaways as chair of the Justice 4 Domestic Workers group, says the system needs to change urgently.

She says: “What kind of system do we have that the victims are the ones being criminalised? And licensing the perpetrators to abuse more, to exploit more workers. Where is the justice there?”

Press contact: Tom Hodson 020 7157 3015 or tom.hodson@itv.com
Picture contact: Peter Gray 020 7157 3046 or peter.gray@itv.com

Strong support from Peers to end slavery of domestic workers

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On Wednesday 10th December the Modern Slavery Bill reached Committee Stage in the House of Lords. Amendment 94, which would have done much to protect Overseas Domestic Workers from slavery but allowing them to change employer and apply to renew their visa if in full time employment as a domestic worker in a private household, was hotly debated. It is clear that many Peers keenly feel the injustice of the current system which bonds migrant domestic workers to their employers.

Disappointingly the Government continue to attempt to defend the current arrangement; in spite of all the evidence to date showing that the abuse of migrant domestic workers is being facilitated by the tied ODW visa. There is likely to be a vote on this matter at Report stage in February and Kalayaan remains positive that Peers will demand that the current tied visa is reversed.

 

Britain’s Hidden Slaves: Why the Modern Slavery Bill cannot ignore…

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Together with allies at Justice 4 Domestic Workers, Unite, Anti Slavery International and Making HerStory we are holding an event sponsored by Baroness Caroline Cox to discuss the situation of migrant domestic workers in the UK, why they are so vulnerable to abuse and how the Modern Slavery Bill can help.  It will take place on Thursday 20 November at 5.15pm in the House of Lords, Committee Room 1.

Please RSVP to info@kalayaan.org.uk.  Spaces are limited.

No to Slavery. Justice 4 Domestic Workers Rally for rights

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On Sunday 15th June, Justice 4 Domestic workers, together with supporters met in front to Parliament in Westminster to call for the Re-instatement of the Overseas Domestic Worker visa and for the UK to ratify and implement the Domestic Workers’ Convention; IL0 C189, recognising domestic workers as workers.

Report: Draft Modern Slavery Bill is unequivocal about the importance of…

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The report found that:

‘In the case of the domestic worker’s visa, policy changes have unintentionally strengthened the hand of the slave master against the victim of slavery. The moral case for revisiting this issue is urgent and overwhelming. Protecting these victims does not require primary legislation and we call on the Government to take immediate action’.

See the full recommendations on Overseas Domestic Workers here

Two years of the tied visa. Time to reinstate rights

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The 6 April 2014 marked two years since the migrant domestic workers, entering the UK on the Overseas Domestic Worker visa, became tied to their employers. Since this time Kalayaan has registered 402 new workers. 120 of these were tied to their employers as they entered on either the tied ODW visa or on the diplomatic domestic worker visa.

A comparison of the reports of abuse made to Kalayaan by workers who are tied to their employers and those who are not (who entered prior to 2012 yet registered at Kalayaan since this time) demonstrate clearly that, while all migrant domestic workers remain vulnerable to abuse, those who are tied to their employers have worse conditions and less freedom:

  • Tied workers are twice as likely to report having being physically abused as those who were not tied (16% and 8%)
  • 65% of those on the tied visa didn’t have their own rooms, so had no privacy, often sleeping in the kitchen or lounge or sharing with the children, compared to 34% of those not tied
  • 78% of tied workers had their passport kept from them, compared with 48% of those not tied
  • Kalayaan staff assessed more than double (69%) of those tied as trafficked, in contrast with 26% of those who were not tied.

You can read our briefing ‘Still enslaved: The migrant domestic workers who are trapped by the immigration rules’.

Stop domestic servitude in the UK #NoToSlavery

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The removal of the basic rights of migrant domestic workers and the introduction of a visa which ‘ties’ them to their employer has enslaved migrant domestic workers. If they flee abuse and exploitation, their tied status means they have no redress.

On 1st April Unite, J4DW and Kalayaan presented this petition with 1,000 signatures to number 10 Downing Street to tell the prime minister that we do not need to live again the horrifying abuse of the past. 

We want to collect 1,000 more signatures for Monday 16th June so please consider signing up and circulating.

Labour has vowed to restore protections for migrant domestic workers in the UK

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Chris Bryant MP, the former Shadow Home Office minister, explained at a fringe meeting on Sunday 22nd September 2013 how the changes to the visa which were introduced in April 2012 left migrant domestic workers increasingly vulnerable to exploitation as they are ‘completely tied to their employers’. The party spokesperson on immigration committed that Labour would reintroduce the original overseas domestic worker visa to prevent this form of virtual slavery in Britain.

Kalayaan is delighted that the tied visa has been recognised for what it is; a route which facilitates abuse and exploitation. We applaud Chris Bryant MP for being prepared to take real action to prevent and address slavery and other abuses which take place in private home in the UK.

The Draft Modern Slavery Bill: A missed opportunity

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Kalayaan has concerns that while migrant domestic workers remain tied to their employers the Modern Slavery Bill will never have the effective witnesses it needs to secure criminal prosecutions.

Kalayaan considers the lack of additional support measures for victims of trafficking in the Draft Modern Slavery Bill, published on the 16 December 2013 to be a missed opportunity. In particular we had hoped for a parallel commitment to reinstate the original Overseas Domestic Worker visa, a system proven to allow some protections against the abuse of this particularly vulnerable group of migrants. We consider the Government’s defence that information leaflets are supposedly given to migrant domestic workers when they apply to enter the UK absurd: In our experience most migrant domestic workers do not receive this information and without rights which they can access in practise an information leaflet is no help anyway.

Domestic servitude remains both prevalent and hidden in the UK and evidence shows that measures introduced in April 2012 which tie migrant domestic workers to their employer, preventing them from leaving have both increased the abuse of migrant domestic workers while criminalising and driving the victims underground1. To date there has only been one successful prosecution for trafficking an adult for domestic servitude. As we submitted in our written and oral evidence to the Modern Slavery Bill Evidence Review, in order for migrant domestic workers to come forward and give evidence to allow for successful prosecutions they must be supported in law to do so. In contrast the current immigration rules play into the hands of their exploiters.

We are encouraged that the Report of the Modern Slavery Bill Evidence Review acknowledges the problems with the current tied visa and states that it exposes domestic workers to the risk of exploitation. However we believe that the recommendations to ‘consider the reinstatement of the right to change employer’ do not go far enough. The original visa was recognised internationally as best practise and should be reinstated in its entirely. In the meantime, while considerations are made and debated we are failing the victims.