People in slavery are often forced to live and work in squalid, overcrowded conditions putting them at a high risk of contracting and transmitting coronavirus. Outbreaks will expose victims to further risks including being forced to work while showing symptoms or to not follow social distancing measures. They are unlikely to seek medical help, fearing they may be arrested and detained.
The pandemic creates a growing risk of labour exploitation amongst vulnerable migrant workers, who are more likely to work in high risk employment sectors, such as care work and food production. They may also face additional situational vulnerabilities compared to non-migrants, including language barriers, limited support networks and lack of knowledge of labour rights or where to access support. Undocumented migrants are particularly at risk of exploitation, as are those with no recourse to public funds who find themselves unemployed as a result of the pandemic.
The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority investigates all aspects of labour exploitation in England and Wales. The GLAA’s role is to protect vulnerable and exploited workers and, working with partner organisations such as the police and National Crime Agency, they investigate reports of worker exploitation and illegal activity such as human trafficking, forced labour and illegal labour provision, as well as offences under the National Minimum Wage and Employment Agencies Acts.
The GLAA publishes workers’ rights leaflets in 19 different languages which can be found here Workers' Rights Leaflets
Albanian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified), Czech, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Kurdish (Sorani), Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi (India), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Welsh
