Migration - The rip-off documented
WORKERS, OCT 2007 ISSUE
Since 2004 when ten new states joined the EU, more than 475,000 Polish and Lithuanian workers have come to work in the UK. A study commissioned by the TUC and conducted by Compas, a research unit based at Oxford University, shows that most had found insecure and poorly paid employment, with more than half of those surveyed encountering problems at work.
A quarter of the workers in the study reported having no written contract (a figure which rose to nearly a third amongst agency workers) and over a quarter had faced problems with payment – including not being paid for hours worked, discrepancies between pay and payslips, unauthorised deductions and errors in pay calculation. Ten times as many migrants as indigenous workers were paid less than the minimum wage.
Nearly a third of the workers in the report were living in accommodation provided by their employer, and as a result described excessive hours (due to their employment being linked to where they lived) and poor living conditions.