Category: Trade Union activity/model ‘motion’

4 November 2024: Guardian: Union launches charter to protect care workers on sponsored UK visas

Salford council is first signatory to Unison agreement intended to prevent exploitation of migrant workers

Care workers from countries such as India, Nigeria and the Philippines who faced losing their immigration status in the UK if they left their employers have been promised new protections by a landmark, grassroots deal.

The migrant care workers charter is an agreement designed by care workers and the trade union Unison to prevent the exploitation of people on sponsored visas – and Salford council is the first in the country to sign up to it.

12 March 2024: Guardian: Civil servants threaten ministers with legal action over Rwanda bill

Exclusive: Union says Home Office staff could be in breach of international law if they implement deportations

Civil servants have threatened ministers with legal action over concerns that senior Home Office staff could be in breach of international law if they implement the government’s Rwanda deportation bill.

The FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, have warned they could also be in violation of the civil service code – and open to possible prosecution – if they followed a minister’s demands to ignore an urgent injunction from Strasbourg banning a deportation.

It has sent a pre-action legal letter to James Cleverly, the home secretary, calling for clarity – with a request to either amend the legislation or change the code.

19 December 2023: PCS: Why we must fight for Safe Passage for refugees

Charlotte Khan from Care4Calais writes about the miserable reality of trying to find safety and freedom as a refugee in the UK and the importance of PCS standing on the side of refugees.

I started writing this post over a week ago. It should have been easy.  

I should have been able to simply talk about our belief in the Safe Passage policy, how much we valued working with PCS in challenging the Rwanda plan, and what our hopes for the future are.  

But in the space of just one week I’ve had to rewrite it four times. 

The death of a man on the Bibby Stockholm barge, men at a former RAF base in rural Essex attempting to set themselves on fire, the death of a woman in the Channel, the death of a man in the Channel – tragedy after tragedy.  

Each one devastating for family and friends. Each one heart breaking. And each one infuriatingly preventable.  

PCS are a supporter of the Status Now Network. Here Paul O’Connor Senior National Officer writes about the PCS Campaign 

Pushbacks

In autumn 2021, PCS was approached by members and representatives in our Home Office South-East England branch who had been asked by the then Home Secretary Priti Patel to carry out a dangerous pushbacks manoeuvre on small boats crossing the English Channel.  Our members were clear that they were completely opposed to the policy. They considered it unlawful, morally reprehensible and utterly inhumane.

On the back of that approach, alongside Care4Calais and Channel Rescue, PCS launched a legal challenge against the policy via judicial review.  The impact of this coalition should not be underestimated – here we had an organisation representing workers tasked with carrying out a policy; standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with organisations representing those affected by the policy – a clear indication of the level of inhumanity that the government is attempting to inflict on refugees. 

UNISON North West: @NorthWestUNISON Twitter:

You can join the UNISON Migrant Worker Network to get targeted advice, support and information and raise the issues that are important to you

Go to to sign-up

The Fire Brigades Union is proud to have coordinated the following statement, which was passed as a resolution at our Executive Council last week:

In recent weeks, we have seen an alarming rise in violence and intimidation organised by the far right against refugees and refugee accommodation.

The government is complicit in these attacks. The Rwanda policy does not make sense as a means of stopping small boat crossings – and it is failing on its own terms – but it fits with a long-running campaign of rhetoric and demonisation.

Anti-migrant politics are an attempt to divide working class people against each other. In the past decade, the UK has suffered a crisis of living standards – with wages falling and public services left to rot. The people to blame for this are politicians, billionaires and big corporations, not migrant workers or refugees forced to live in temporary accommodation. The anti-refugee campaign offers no solutions to the real problems faced by the deprived communities they are often targeting. The answer is solidarity, not scapegoating.  

As trade unionists, we know whose side we are on when we see far right mobs attacking refugees and politicians playing the mood music. We send our solidarity to Care4Calais and all groups fighting for refugee rights, and we support the call for safe and legal routes into the UK. We call on workers and trade union members to show their solidarity and to mobilise against the far right.

Signed