Kirankumar Rathod migrated to the UK in May last year with his wife and child. He paid £22,000 to an immigration agent in India who arranged a Skilled Worker visa and certificate of sponsorship based on his qualifications in the healthcare sector. His certificate from London-based Clinica Private Healthcare provided for a full-time healthcare assistant role, working 39 hours a week for just over £23,000 a year.
But soon he realised all was not right. From the time he arrived in the UK, Rathod was provided with no work or payment from the company. He completed an induction course and training and questioned his employer multiple times why he was not given work. He is now pursuing a case of unfair dismissal with the help of the charity Work Rights Centre and a remedy hearing this week marked an important turning point for migrant workers in a similar predicament.
Dr Sarmila Bose, Head of Employment at the Work Rights Centre explained: “The judge decided that it is legal for an order for interim relief to be made for Kirankumar Rathod, amounting to back payment from the date of dismissal of £16,900.97, to be paid within 28 days, with a further £1,703 to be paid on the 30th of each month from now until the case concludes.
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“This award is a life-saver for Kirankumar and his family – it will help alleviate the desperate financial situation they were put in by Clinica. The decision to grant Kirankumar interim relief indicates that there is a pretty good chance of his unfair dismissal claim being successful. That Kirankumar has succeeded in the first stage of his claims is an important development for the scores of migrant carers across the UK who have been scammed and exploited by unscrupulous employers.”
Rathod responded: “I feel massive relief that I will receive the wages I am owed, and that I will continue to receive them while waiting for my case to be decided. This has been an incredibly stressful time for me, both emotionally and financially, as while Clinica denied me work and income I was unable to provide for my family.
“This payment will enable me to continue to fight against the injustice inflicted upon me by Clinica, which offered me work under false pretences when I simply wanted to work hard to care for people in the UK.”
At a hearing in July, Clinica informed the Central London Employment Tribunal that it had since lost its licence to sponsor migrant workers, arguing that making payments would therefore be illegal. Rathod is not alone in finding himself in such a bind, as the National Council of Gujarati Organisations (NCGO) UK had recently highlighted that hundreds of skilled workers from India in the healthcare sector find themselves similarly stranded for no fault of theirs.
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Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, CEO of Work Rights Centre, added: “This case also shows how much harder it is for migrant workers to find justice in the UK due to a visa system premised on sponsorship.
“The sponsorship system puts migrant workers at a disadvantage every step of the way by transferring punitive actions against a rule-breaking employer onto them. The sponsorship system needs to be urgently and fundamentally reformed to enable migrant workers to hold exploitative employers to account for the betterment of all workers.”