Care Work and Immigration: What It Means for Workers

Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s announcement on the BBC on Sunday 11th May that the practice of recruiting workers in the care industry from abroad would end would surely have been met with the wryest of smiles amongst the great and the good within the Reform Party.

They would have known that they have made the Labour Party, at least on this occasion, dance to their tune at a time when immigration is a hot-button issue with the near constant barrage of media coverage and Reform telling anyone that will listen to them that the ills of this country can and should be blamed on people who are invited here by the British ruling class as a hyper-exploitable layer of workers.

Cooper’s announcement that the recruitment of care workers from abroad will be curtailed is part of the Government’s new drive to raise the qualification standards required for work visas and reduce the number of ‘low-skilled’ foreign workers arriving here. The Government says that it hopes that as many as 50,000 less ‘low-skilled’ workers, including care workers, will arrive in this country over the next year as the minimum academic threshold for visas being raised from A-level to graduate level. Cooper also said that companies should recruit British nationals as care workers.

The effect that removing up to 50,000 potential workers from the care industry could be devastating: Care work, whether it is in elderly care homes, supported living community care and children’s care homes, is commonly carried out by workers, at least at junior levels, with only basic qualifications. In essence the criteria set by care work providers for new recruits is to pass an interview with a manager or team leader and successfully go through a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. This at least partially explains why many workers who come to this country opt for care work as their chosen profession.

Matthew is a 35-year old man from Nigeria who came to Britain ten years ago. He initially came alone, leaving his wife and four children in Nigeria, but once Matthew was able to get himself settled and earn enough money, he was able to fly his family here to start a new life.

He is a support worker in a facility which houses young adult males with learning difficulties, autism and challenging behaviour – sometimes violent behaviour. Matthew often works nights and weekends: He needed to do this because, as he was working towards becoming a nurse, he needed as much of his weekdays free to study and attend work placements.

While Matthew on the whole enjoys his work and is grateful for the additional training he has received, which he can take into his future career as a nurse, his life is exhausting – he often rushes or misses cleaning duties that he should carry out at night because he was so tired from a days’ study or work placement. Sixty hour weeks are not uncommon, including day shifts which can be up to thirteen hours long.

Care work involves physically and emotionally draining work, poor training, minimal support, long hours and low pay. It is common for workers to work what are known as ‘sleepovers’, where a care worker remains at work but is stood down from duty (for example from 10pm until 7am). However, despite remaining on the premises and being expected to assist where necessary through the night, care workers receive only £25 to £45 in pay. This practice was challenged in the courts and, in March 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that sleepover workers were not entitled to the National Minimum Wage except in instances where they were required to assist during the night, though there are examples of employers not paying their workers in these instances.

Care workers who work in supported living are often required to attend to ‘service users’ whose mental health conditions resulted in them exhibiting extremely violent behaviours, including kicking, punching, spitting, biting and throwing objects at workers.

Despite the potentially violent and dangerous working environment, care work is a profession dominated by women – Government figures from 2015 showed that 84% of care workers are women. It is arguable that male ‘service users’ with violent tendencies could easily overwhelm a female care worker, yet care work facilities often lack risk assessments and care workers are given piecemeal training on how to deal with violent ‘service users’.

Constantin is a 45-year old Romanian who came to Britain ten years ago. He arrived in Britain alone, leaving his partner and two children in Romania. He came to Britain because he believed that he could provide a better life for his family and certainly couldn’t earn the wages he could earn here in Romania. He is a qualified plumber, but decided to work in care work in this country because he struggled to find work as a plumber at home.

Constantin commonly works sixty-hour weeks, including sleepover shifts, sending as much money as he can home. He often works himself ill and his colleagues think that he is taken advantage of by the management because of his willingness to work and his unwillingness to say ‘no’ when they pile yet more work on him.

When his partner decided to come to Britain, as a care worker herself, their children stayed in Romania living with family members.

Care work has a certain appeal for all workers, including workers from abroad: The entry criteria is achievable for most people, it is relatively easy to move from one employer to another if things turn sour and there are always less workers than there is work, which means that someone can work way more hours than is promised in their contract. A care worker is paid around £12.50 per hour (the minimum wage is currently £12.21). For workers from abroad, the key benefit (or at least until Cooper’s announcement) is that care work came under the purview of Health and Care Workers’ Visas, a scheme which facilitated the NHS importing workers from countries like the Philippines on visas that can run for up to five years before needing to be renewed.

Care work undertaken by private contractors works on the basis of being paid a fee (usually from the local council). The care provider, in order to extract the maximum profit from these fees, strips out every expense perceived to be unnecessary from day-to-day operations: Things like routinely understaffing, paying workers lower allowances for sleepovers than the company were paid in fees, truncating training and low pay generally.

The next twelve months will be quite revealing for workers: Firstly we will see just how able (or not) the Government really is to make these pledged cuts in immigration that it has been clearly pressured into by Reform and the mass media, but secondly it will demonstrate to workers how much care work and other industries depend on labour brought in from abroad.