Joint Letter, please reply to Kate Willingham, Anti-Slavery International
Thomas Clarkson House, Broomgrove Road, London, SW9 9TL
Rt. Hon Dr Vince Cable MP
Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
1 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0ET
12 December 2012
Dear Secretary of State,
Today, 12 December 2012, is being marked globally as a day of action for ratification of
International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No.189 on Decent Work for Domestic
Workers, which has now entered into force following its formal adoption by four countries. On this
occasion, we urge you and your colleagues to promote and protect the rights of domestic workers by
ratifying the Convention and its accompanying Recommendation, as well as restoring essential
protections for migrant domestic workers in the UK.
Convention No.189 is a ground breaking treaty which establishes the first global standards for the
estimated 50 to 100 million domestic workers worldwide, the vast majority of whom are women and
girls, who clean, cook and care for children and the elderly in private households. Despite their
important contributions to the global economy, domestic workers are vulnerable to a wide range of
abuses. These include excessive hours of work with no rest, non-payment of wages, forced
confinement, physical and sexual abuse, forced labour and trafficking. Children – who make up
nearly 30 percent of domestic workers globally – and migrant domestic workers are often the most
vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Convention No.189 provides desperately needed and long
overdue protections, including special protections for child domestic workers and migrant domestic
workers.
Despite this, the Government has publicly stated in an explanatory memorandum laid before
Parliament on 27th of April 2012 that whilst the UK supports the principles behind the Domestic
Workers Convention, it does not think that ratification of the Convention is appropriate for the UK
because of the burdens that implementing the health and safety provisions would impose on UK
business and citizens.
We urge the Government to reconsider this position. Domestic work is work. As in other sectors,
workers are exposed to a number of health hazards, including burns and ergonomic risks. Whilst the
privacy of the home should be preserved, it should also be seen as an employer’s responsibility to
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ensure that employees do not work in conditions that put their health and safety at risk. Furthermore,
Convention No.189 in fact offers a considerable degree of flexibility. Most of its provisions are
subject to conformity with national laws, regulations and practices, including article 10 on working
conditions and article 13 on health and safety. A number of articles specify that their implementation
should be progressive, including article 13 on health and safety. Finally, regulations should be agreed
through tripartite negotiations between workers, employers and government.
Ratification of Convention No.189 will help protect domestic workers worldwide from abuse and
exploitation. We urge the Government to send a strong message that it takes seriously the protection
of domestic workers, including the most vulnerable – children and migrants.
In addition, we would like to take this opportunity to state our concerns about the recent changes to
the Overseas Domestic Worker visa, which mean that migrant domestic workers are restricted to a 6
month non-renewable visa and no longer have the right to change employer, bring dependents, or
apply for settlement. We believe that these changes leave migrant domestic workers vulnerable to
abuse, exploitation, forced labour, and trafficking. These concerns have been previously raised with
your department (joint letter to Norman Lamb MP, 16 June 2012).
In response to these concerns, the Government referred to a number of additional protection
measures put in place to protect migrant domestic workers. However, the majority of these measures
are neither new nor will they be effective. Checking that migrant domestic workers have been
employed for 12 months prior to entry by their employer is a measure that has been in place since
1990. It did not, and will not, guarantee that it is not an abusive employment relationship. Requiring
the employer and domestic worker to sign a contract before entry clearance is issued similarly will
not ensure that the employment relationship is free from exploitation. In any case, the contract will
be meaningless if domestic workers have no way of enforcing it because they cannot change
employer and would lose their right to work and stay in the UK as soon as they flee an abusive
employer.
The letter providing translated information to domestic workers about their rights in the UK, which
was shown to Kalayaan by the UK Border Agency (UKBA), is in reality mostly a statement of the
restrictions of the domestic worker’s visa. It does not state what employment protections exist in the
UK and therefore domestic workers are unlikely to know that they are entitled to the National
Minimum Wage and Statutory Sick Pay. Migrant domestic workers will no longer be able to secure
compensation through employment tribunals as they will not have permission to remain in the UK to
take the cases and will not be able to work to support themselves whilst they do.
The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) offers no protection to migrant domestic workers who are
subjected to abuse, exploitation or forced labour but have not been trafficked. Even in cases of
trafficked migrant domestic workers, there are concerns about the ability of the NRM to consistently
identify and assist trafficked people. The Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group, which monitors the
UK Government’s implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against
Trafficking in Human Beings, concluded that the NRM is flawed; operated by staff who have
received minimal training, putting more emphasis on the immigration status of the presumed
trafficked person than the alleged crime against them, and using flawed legal guidance relating to
who should be identified as a trafficked person.
Furthermore, these protection measures have not been applied in practice. As of July 2012, Kalayaan
had registered 17 domestic workers who have fled employers after having been brought to the UK on
the new restricted visas. In not one of these cases was the domestic worker provided with an
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information letter about her rights. In one case, a contract that was submitted for a domestic worker’s
entry clearance application, and approved by UKBA, stated that she would be working full time and
paid the equivalent of £350 per month, which is less than half the National Minimum wage. In
reality, the domestic worker was made to work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, meaning that her
salary was actually the equivalent of 80 pence per hour. In another case, a domestic worker was
interviewed at the UK immigration desk in front of her employers and disclosed that she would be
paid a salary equivalent to less than 35 pence per hour. The UKBA officials told the employers that
they hoped they would treat her better in the UK and then allowed them to enter.
The right to change employer is a fundamental safeguard. With no other option, many migrant
domestic workers will continue to suffer abuse and exploitation rather than lose their livelihood,
accommodation and permission to stay in the UK. Abuse and exploitation is likely to increase as
unscrupulous employers know that there will be no realistic sanction for their actions, and that the
threats that they make about illegality, detention and deportation will be enforced. In a report on
domestic servitude (September 2010, A/HRC/15/20), the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary
Forms of Slavery identified the tying of visas to a particular employer as a factor creating an extreme
dependency on an employer, making the migrant domestic worker easy to exploit. The practice of
tying visas to a particular employer has been identified by anti-trafficking experts, such as the OSCE
Special Representative on Trafficking, as one of the factors contributing to trafficking.
We urge the Government to reconsider its position and take positive action to promote and protect
the rights of domestic workers by signing and ratifying the Convention and its accompanying
Recommendation. We also urge the Government to restore essential protections for migrant domestic
workers in the UK including the right to change employer, renew their visa, apply for settlement, and
their ability to enforce the rights they have without fear.
As some of the concerns set out above relate to the conduct of the UKBA, we are copying this letter
to Theresa May.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Whitehouse, Chair, Anti-Slavery International
Marissa Begonia, Chair, Justice for Domestic Workers
Francesca Cooney, Chair, Kalayaan
Brendan Barber, General Secretary, Trades Union Congress
Diana Holland, Assistant Secretary General, Unite the Union
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