Report based on six-country comparison finds UK's visa sponsorship system risks breaching human rights obligations
A new report by the employment rights charity Work Rights Centre (WoRC) has raised serious concerns about the UK's employer-sponsored visa system, warning that it risks fostering widespread labour exploitation and potentially breaches the country's international human rights obligations.
You can download the 37-page report here.
Drawing on a six-country comparative analysis, the report argues that the current visa model not only creates a dangerous imbalance of power between employers and migrant workers but also fails to provide adequate safeguards or remedies for those subjected to abuse. WoRC calls for the introduction of a new 'Workplace Justice Visa' to better protect migrant workers.
Under the immigration system introduced after the UK's departure from the European Union, most foreign workers must secure a visa that is directly tied to a sponsoring employer. While this model is ostensibly designed to meet labour shortages in key sectors, WoRC says that it simultaneously places workers in precarious positions where their right to remain in the UK — and often their economic survival — depends entirely on a single employer.
The report explains: "By definition, sponsorship inhibits workers' ability to withdraw their labour from an individual employer and move elsewhere. This is a barrier to what is a fundamental human right, namely the right to free choice of employment which is codified in the right to work under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. While sponsored workers have in theory the right to change employers, doing so in practice is significantly more difficult, compared to workers whose immigration status is not dependent on their employer, and who have access to public funds."
WoRC highlights how this arrangement has opened the door to exploitation, including underpayment, excessive working hours, coercive working conditions, and even cases where job roles deviate drastically from the terms originally agreed upon. In more extreme scenarios, some migrants have found themselves in conditions resembling forced labour, potentially breaching Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits slavery and servitude.
The report details how exploitative practices often go unchallenged, in part because victims fear losing their immigration status if they leave an abusive employer. Extensive research by charities, academics, and journalists has shown that some employers exploit workers and use the threat of jeopardising their immigration status to coerce them into staying in abusive or exploitative jobs, effectively silencing any attempts to raise complaints. Under current rules, workers have just 60 days from the end of employment to secure a new sponsorship, a period that experts say is too short for many to find alternative work, especially in a system with many bureaucratic hurdles. This tight timeframe discourages workers from speaking out or leaving exploitative roles, effectively trapping them in abusive environments.
Despite some recent enforcement actions by the Home Office — including a rise in licence suspensions and revocations for non-compliant sponsors — the report concludes that the government's efforts remain narrowly focused on employer regulation. Crucially, it finds that little has been done to support the migrant workers themselves. There is, for example, no dedicated mechanism for compensating those who have been exploited, nor a system to ensure their safe transition to new employment or immigration security.
The existing National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the government's framework for identifying and supporting victims of modern slavery, is described as ill-suited to the realities faced by many migrant workers. The report criticises the NRM as overly narrow in scope, oversubscribed, and lacking a viable route to long-term immigration security for victims of exploitation who fall outside its limited criteria.
To address these issues, the Work Rights Centre proposes a set of reforms aimed at rebalancing the power dynamic between employers and migrant workers and improving protections for those at risk of abuse. Chief among them is the introduction of a new UK Workplace Justice visa. This visa would allow migrant workers who have experienced exploitation to remain in the UK while seeking alternative employment, regardless of whether their original visa remains valid. According to the report, similar schemes already exist in countries such as Australia, Canada, and Finland, where they have proved to be effective lifelines for exploited workers.
WoRC explains: "All six countries we examined operated, with some variance, versions of an immigration route or solution that recognises the injustice of migrant workers being exploited by their visa sponsor and supports them to secure alternative employment. To make this most inclusive, the route should be open to applicants regardless of the validity of their leave, it should grant them the right to remain and work for at least as long as their original work visa, and be accessible in practice, including by adopting proportionate thresholds reflective of the wide continuum of exploitation that migrants experience in practice."
In addition, the report recommends extending the post-employment grace period from 60 days to six months, granting workers a more realistic opportunity to find a new sponsor without falling into irregular status or destitution. Such a move would not only bring the UK into line with other high-income countries but also formalise a discretion the Home Office is already understood to have applied informally in some sectors, such as adult social care.
The final key recommendation is to introduce new civil and criminal penalties for employers who abuse the sponsorship system. The report notes that while employers face serious consequences for hiring unauthorised workers, there are few comparable sanctions for those who exploit their legal employees. Establishing a tougher penalties regime, the report suggests, could act as a deterrent while also funding compensation schemes for victims.
WoRC's findings have already prompted wider calls for action. Over 130 organisations and lawyers signed a letter to the Home Secretary urging the Government to adopt the proposed reforms.
The 8-page letter, which you can read here, states: "We write to express our serious concerns around the treatment of migrant workers arriving to the UK on sponsored work visas and the lack of meaningful policy interventions by the UK government to protect the human rights of those affected by exploitation in the workplace. We are calling on the government to make three fundamental changes to immigration policy around sponsorship, to: protect victims of exploitation, empower migrant workers to report and leave exploitative workplaces, and hold abusive sponsors to account. In our view, these measures are urgently needed to ensure the UK's work migration system protects the dignity and human rights of migrant workers."
The signatories warn that without swift and meaningful reform to make immigration policy more focused on the needs and rights of victims, the current sponsorship system will continue to drive thousands of workers—and their families—into irregular immigration status. The organisations and lawyers working directly with migrants workers stress that this has already happened for many of the people they assist.