Private firms 'are using detained immigrants as cheap labour'
Categories: Articles:Asylum & Refugees |
Published: 25/08/2014 |
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G4S and Serco saving millions by paying detainees as little as £1 an hour to cook and clean, claim campaigners
Home Office figures showed that in May this year, detainees in centres run by Serco, G4S and other contractors did nearly 45,000 hours of work for a total of nearly £45,500 in pay. Had they been paid at the national minimum wage, the cost would have been more than £280,000" (Kevin Rawlinson, The Guardian, 22 August)
Campaigners have criticised private firms for using immigration detainees as cheap labour inside detention centres after research suggested this saves them millions of pounds. Some detainees said they were being paid as little as £1 an hour to cook and clean.
Over 12 months, the figures suggest that the firms – which also include Mitie and GEO – could have saved more than £2.8m, according to research group Corporate Watch, which obtained the data, and said firms were "exploiting their captive migrant workforce".
The Home Office insisted, however, that detainees had a choice whether or not to work and that inspectors had praised the practice of allowing them to work while they await removal from the UK.
One female detainee, who spent months in the Yarl's Wood centre in Bedfordshire, where she was employed as a cleaner, said she believed the detainees were being used to do essential work in place of staff paid the minimum wage. Read more here
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