Morning Star Scotland conference: migrant workers fighting and winning

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Young Unite worker Tiago Brandao shared his experience of leaving Portugal to find work and build a life in Scotland.

“Our work keeps Scotland running,” he said.

“We serve people, cook, clean, work breaks, work late, work weekends and cover shifts, but that work is not the whole story.

“Many workers face insecure hours, split shifts, contracts that are hard to understand, tips sharing in unclear ways and data does not always add up.

“The hard part is simply a simple fear: if you complain, you might lose your job. That fear is not imaginary.”

Breaking those chains of fear was central to Unison’s campaign to move to sector-wide sponsorship in social care, rather than leaving workers tied to exploitative employers.

Favour Davidking, a worker with a non-unionised care company, described joining her first online Unison meeting as a “game changer” as they established a committee for migrant care workers.

“The first line of action was to launch a survey,” she said. “This survey engaged over 650 migrant workers in social care.

“What we saw in the survey was alarming: the exploitation going on and the abuse.

“That is the life of a migrant being sponsored.”

Speaking of the campaign’s success in winning concessions from Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood on creating a sector-wide sponsorship scheme, she said: “Maybe it’s a weak victory, but a victory is a victory.

“She had bought the idea of the fair visa campaign.

“We are very proud to have delivered this through a collective effort through our union, Unison, through our migrant care worker campaign, and we are not stopping.”

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