Indian Care Worker wins £30k after Employer failed to provide Work

An Indian care worker who moved to the UK through the post-Brexit visa scheme has been awarded nearly £30,000 because his employer failed to give him a single day of work for a year.

The tribunal ordered Staffordshire-based Swan Care Solutions Ltd to pay Shabin Shaji for the work he was “ready, able and willing to do”.

Shaji moved from Kerala to Stafford in 2023 after believing there was a “major shortage” of healthcare workers in Britain.

Before arriving in the UK, he sought advice from a YouTube influencer about securing work in Britain.

The tribunal heard that the influencer connected him with agents, whom he paid £17,000 before being interviewed for a role with Swan Care Solutions through WhatsApp.

Shaji later received a certificate of sponsorship, allowing him to live and work in the UK under Swan Care Solutions as his Home Office-approved sponsoring employer.

But despite moving to Britain, buying a car and completing online training, the computer science graduate was never given any shifts by the care company.

The tribunal heard that Shaji repeatedly pleaded for work, but his employer failed to provide him with any hours.

As a result, he fell into destitution.

His sponsored visa restricted him from working elsewhere for more than 20 hours a week.

Shaji later secured sponsorship from another employer in April 2024. He eventually returned to India because of ill health.

The 33-year-old brought the claim with support from employment justice charity Work Rights Centre, which said “thousands of people” had paid recruiters before arriving in Britain and being “ghosted”.

Dora-Olivia Vicol, the charity’s chief executive, said: “We’ve seen case after case of migrant care workers sold a dream in Britain, leaving their careers and families behind, only to find destitution and abandonment by their employer and the state.

“The skilled worker visa must be entirely reformed to make it easier to change employers when rights or contracts are breached.”

The tribunal also heard that staff at Swan Care Solutions suggested Shaji take cash-in-hand work and use a food bank while waiting for shifts, telling him they would contact him when it was his “turn”.

At a hearing in May, the company was ordered to pay £8,700 in costs on top of £28,843.54 in wages and holiday pay. The award also included compensation for failing to provide a written contract and failing to comply with grievance procedures.

During a hearing in Birmingham earlier this year, employment judge Kate Edmonds said:

“The claimant had done what needed to be done to start work… He was now in the country, with the right permissions, and living in the right location.

“However, the respondent did not provide him with work, nor did they pay him.

“What, in effect, the respondent was doing was treating the claimant as a zero-hours worker… The problem, of course, was that the claimant was not a zero-hours worker.

“The respondent withheld work from him… There was therefore an unauthorised deduction from his wages.”

Describing the hardship he experienced, Shaji said:

“I was broke and had to rely on charity. I drank tap water and bought bread close to its expiration date to survive [and] looked around local shops in Stafford for free bananas and bread for those who were struggling.

“I attended church and on Sundays after worship, the good people who attend the worship shared with me some snacks with tea, for which I am very grateful.

“I thought it would be a great opportunity, but when I came to the UK I found immigrants and British people struggling.

“I was in a terrible situation, feeling like no one in authority cared if I lived or died.”

Shaji also told the tribunal that Swan Care Solutions’ actions had “serious long-term detrimental effects on my personal and family finances”.

Judge Edmonds said it was “not entirely clear” how Shaji first came into contact with Swan Care Solutions. However, she noted that he “was in touch with individuals with whom he appears to have transferred some money”.

The judge also said Swan Care Solutions’ licence to issue certificates of sponsorship was “ultimately revoked” in 2024, partly because workers were not paid until training had been completed.