Our lowest-paid migrants are now working so hard they’re falling ill. When will we protect them?

This autumn, migrant workers are speaking up against exploitation. Those working as outsourced cleaners, caterers, porters, park attendants and security guards in Britain’s low-pay economy are facing off against their employers and their illustrious clients by demanding direct employment, occupational sick pay and an end to poverty wages.

These workers report being unlawfully denied annual leave and of being racially discriminated against by the public and their managers. They report being overworked to the point of hospitalisation, of unchecked sexual harassment and of having had their health and safety routinely put in danger by unscrupulous employers who refuse to comply with health and safety regulations.

They are now taking action. In July this year, park attendants joined the picket line to protest poor working conditions from their employer, French multinational VINCI. On 24 October, café workers outsourced to catering giant BaxterStorey walked out of the University of Greenwich during graduation. This wave of action spilled over to the West London hospital of St Mary’s, where over 100 cleaners, caterers and porters – brought in by French multinational Sodexo – demanded direct employment by the NHS Trust and complete equality in pay and terms and conditions with NHS staff.

But despite enjoying huge support among doctors, nurses and the public, these hospital workers report experiencing continuing poor working conditions.

The workers we have spoken to claim to be denied access to NHS staff canteens and staff rooms, forced to change clothes in mixed gender, dimly-lit basements They claim that they are left unvaccinated against illnesses despite Sodexo having a legal obligation to vaccinate them. But this is not all: it also seems as though there is a culture of bullying, racial and disability discrimination within the hospital.

In the run-up to the strikes one cleaner, a Lithuanian named Loreta, was allegedly told that “all Eastern Europeans need to be sent back because they are troublemakers”. Her colleague, Vitalija, a fellow Eastern European, also alleges she was threatened, illegally, with the sack for organising her colleagues and for planning to go on strike.

Another employee, a Portuguese cleaner named Minervina, who has worked at St Mary’s for over a decade, was recently hospitalised on our picket line. Minervina suffers from fibromyalgia, which can cause pain all over the body, extreme fatigue, muscle stiffness and difficulties sleeping and with cognition, something that is colloquially referred to as “fibro fog”. Despite having on multiple occasions supplied her employers with a GP note confirming her diagnosis and stipulating that she must not engage in deep cleans, she claims that she has been forced her to clean areas of the hospital with only one colleague that used to be done by five people.

On 31 October, Minervina collapsed outside St Mary’s main entrance, the picket line for what was our third day of strike action. She was admitted to A&E and kept overnight for several days. She is now signed off from work.

Minervina wants you to see her photo in the hospital bed. She wants you to understand the human cost of the outsourcing model, which is propped up by poor working conditions and low pay. Minervina and her colleagues work tirelessly day in, day out, to keep NHS patients safe, but it seems as though it is the NHS which is failing them.

Needless to say, United Voices of the World (UVW) has started legal proceedings against Sodexo and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust for a swathe of alleged violations against the Equality Act and other legislation. But these workers are strong, and they’re doing far more than just relying on lawyers; instead they have been taking matters into their own hands.

On 31 October over 200 workers engaged in a flying picket across London that saw them shut down roads in Westminster, occupy the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice and BaxterStorey, before putting the headquarters of ITV, Channel 4 and ITN in a state of total lockdown.

By fighting what we believe to be brazen exploitation at a time when hostility to migrants is as at an all-time high, these workers are exposing the poverty that they live in. They are also living proof that the concept of “passive migrant workforces” as the driving force of wage stagnation and declining working conditions is a myth.

We know we can make change happen. In 2017 our trade union action brought about the historic result of forcing a UK university to bring its outsourced cleaners in-house.

In our view, Tim Orchard, CEO of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, should now bring his own hospital workers in-house – something which 50 doctors have now called upon him to do. We believe that if this happens, it won’t be long before other NHS Trusts are forced to follow suit and put an end to what we would argue is exploitation of migrant and BAME workers.

Kane Shaw is campaign communications editorial lead at United Voices of the World (UVW)

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