background: forced LABOUR IN THE UK

Modern slavery continues to exist in the UK. Some of the British products we buy today and the services we receive may have involved the use of forced labour. These workers are controlled through various means including debt bondage, the removal of passports and the use of violence, intimidation and threats.

Anti-Slavery International estimates that in addition to the thousand men, women and children who are trafficked (transported away from their communities through coercion or deception) for forced labour to the UK at any one time, hundreds more people who have not been trafficked are estimated to be working in conditions of forced labour or servitude. Yet the UK does not have specific legislation rendering forced labour and servitude punishable penal offences.

Anti-Slavery International’s own research has found many people, including children, in forced labour across a range of sectors, including domestic servitude, agriculture, construction, food processing and packaging, nursing, hospitality, and the restaurant trade. As an example of the dangers faced by a single community, Chinese migrant workers have been found in forced labour as DVD sellers, in factory work, in Chinese restaurants and in cockle picking.

The current legal framework

Currently in the UK prosecutions for forced labour are limited to cases where a person has been trafficked.

The UK Government introduced the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claiments, etc.) Act in 2004 which made trafficking for all forms of labour exploitation a criminal offence. However, under this legislation the trafficking element of the case is vital to the success of the prosecution, therefore making it impossible to obtain a conviction where trafficking is difficult to prove.

In these cases, where forced labour is clearly evident, a dedicated criminal law would allow police and prosecutors to pursue cases and seek justice. Anti-Slavery International is aware of one case of a domestic worker in forced labour where the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge on the basis that the trafficking element of the case could not be proven.

The UK’s international obligations

Under article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the ILO conventions against forced labour the UK is bound by international law to criminalise forced labour and provide protection from slavery, servitude and forced labour.

Given the gap in legislation, the UK is in danger of being in breach of its international obligations and vulnerable to challenges in the European Court of Human Rights. In 2005 the Court found France in breach of its obligations because it lacked the criminal legislation to protect a Togolese woman from domestic servitude.

Proposed legal amendments

Forced labour will remain a reality in the UK unless adequate legislation is put in place and enforced. The existing legal provisions fail to protect victims or ensure that the perpetrators of these crimes are brought to justice.

If adopted, amendments 182 and 183 to the Coroners and Justice Bill, which is currently before Parliament, would create two new criminal offences: for holding someone in servitude; and for subjecting someone to forced or compulsory labour. These stand-alone offences include penalties that reflect the severity of this crime and ensure that vulnerable people are fully protected from this abuse.

Stories of slavery in the UK

Zari* came from East Africa to the UK as a domestic worker with her employer. When her employer died, she was taken on by the employer’s cousin. The cousin asked for her passport to renew her visa, but her passport was never returned. Zari had to work seven days a week with no time off or breaks. She was paid £100 per week, but after deductions for food and rent (a mattress on the kitchen floor), she had barely £40 left. She was not allowed out of the house unaccompanied, she was insulted, beaten and also sexually abused by the employer’s husband. She managed to run away and tried to complain to the police but they did not pursue an investigation.

Aleksander* a worker from Poland, was forced to work picking flowers in Scotland. He received only 4p per bunch picked, earning just £24 a day for a nine hour day. Huge deductions were made without his consent from his already sub-minimum wage earnings for accommodation and transport costs. He slept in a cramped room with eight other workers in accommodation which had only four toilets between 43 workers. He received a threatening letter from his boss stating that he was not free to leave before the end of his contract unless he paid £700, and if he did not pay the money it would be recovered from his family back home.

* Their names have been changed to protect their identity

Forced labour and slavery

Forced labour is any work or service which people are made to do against their will under threat of some form of punishment.

Forced labour is a contemporary form of slavery, which has a number of key characteristics:

• forced to work, through mental or physical threat;
• controlled by an 'employer', under the threat of some form of punishment;
• dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as 'property';
• physically constrained or has restrictions placed on their freedom of movement.

Click here to take action to make forced labour a criminal offence in the UK