• ‘Paid work’ or underpaid labour? The labour exploitation of detainees within immigration detention

    In June 2017, ten immigration detainees launched a judicial review action against the Home Office challenging the payment of ‘slave’ like wages for labour undertaken within immigration detention. This practice, termed ‘paid work’ by the Government, is remunerated at a rate of £1.00 or £1.25 per hour and includes work as cleaners, cooks, hairdressers, gym orderlies and gardeners – roles that are essential to the running of the immigration removal centres. In 2014 this practice resulted in 44,832 hours’ worth of work. In this blog, we argue that this work is exploitative and ‘unfree’. In recognition that many detainees wish to work however, we do not call for an end to this practice; rather we highlight the structural conditions that render detainees more likely to accept exploitative conditions of work (including but not restricted to low pay), and argue that, at the very least, detainees should be provided with the national minimum wage.

    The Government justifies the payment of low wages on grounds that ‘paid work’ is in the detainees’ interests as it ‘prevents boredom and frustration’ and that paying them a higher rate would not ‘reflect the true economic value of their labour’. Yet the Government stands accused of having another motivation for creating a system of ‘paid work’ within immigration detention: utilising cheap labour which potentially saves the private corporations running the detention estate up to £1.5million in annual savings: money that would otherwise be spent on paying the workers the national minimum wage.

    http://discoversociety.org/2017/08/02/paid-work-or-underpaid-labour-the-labour-exploitation-of-detainees-
    #esclavage_moderne #détention_administrative #rétention #asile #migrations #réfugiés #travail #rémunération #salaire #exploitation #économie