urgent Action

Write to your MP to protect domestic workers in the UK from slavery

Over the past 18 months, the Home Alone: End Domestic Slavery campaign has been calling for a new International Labour Organization Convention, which was adopted in June 2011, to provide an international framework for national labour laws to address the particular vulnerability of domestic workers everywhere to slavery and exploitation. Throughout our campaigning for the UK to support this Convention, the Government constantly reassured us that domestic workers already have strong protections in the UK and that there was no need to create additional obligations for the protection of domestic workers in a new convention. The UK’s refusal to vote in favour of the Convention was hugely disappointing but now the Government is also trying to take away one of the very important measures which protect domestic workers in the UK under a new proposal.

The existing Overseas Domestic Worker (ODW) visa provides a vitally important safeguard for some of the most vulnerable and isolated workers in the UK who are regularly subjected to abuse, exploitation and human trafficking. Under the present ODW visa arrangement, domestic workers are allowed to change employer but the Government is proposing to abolish this visa and replace it with a 6-month visit visa, with no employment rights and no right to change employers, greatly increasing the risk of exploitation and the likelihood of trafficking.

Allowing domestic workers to leave abusive employers and work within another household is extremely important in providing an escape route from exploitative and abusive situations. This is because they can come forward and receive support and assistance knowing that they can still seek work with another employer and thereby will not put their livelihood at risk. If they do not have this option, they are much less likely to leave the situation they are in, or become faced with the choice of continuing to suffer or fleeing and becoming destitute and ‘illegal’.

To find out more please download the briefing here.

We urgently need you to write to your MP asking them to call on the Government to retain the current provisions and ensure domestic workers have the right to change employers. To find out who your MP is and email them visit www.writetothem.com or post a letter to:

(NAME) MP
House of Commons
London, SW1A 0AA

Download the sample letter to copy and past into your email.

Please send any responses you receive to Iqtadar Hasnain at i.hasnain@antislavery.org.