International recruitment and support for migrant healthcare workers

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Conference
2022 Health Care Service Group Conference
Date
10 December 2021
Decision
Carried

For a long time, the UK has benefited enormously from the skills and knowledge of healthcare workers who have come to live and work with us. From the early days of the NHS and the ‘Windrush’ generation to our own times, where many tens of thousands of nurses and doctors from all over the world provide care and support to our patients and communities, we have benefited from this migration. Around 190,000 NHS staff report their nationality as being something other than ‘British.’

Our NHS truly is an international health service, and many more overseas staff work in social care settings around the UK. Our services are more effective because of the skills and knowledge they bring. They also help in making them more diverse and understanding of the needs of the populations we serve.

As members of a great trade union and a solidarity-based movement, we are proud to work alongside these colleagues and learn a great deal from them.

The heavy recruitment of healthcare workers internationally is, however, ethically questionable. We support the right of our colleagues to travel and work with freedom, but we must question our government’s heavy dependence on overseas recruitment in order to maintain a health workforce capable of meeting the demands of our ageing society.

The UK is one of the largest net ‘importers’ of healthcare workers in the world and continues to increase international recruitment. This is because our Government has for a long time, with terrible consequences, failed to invest to educate and train enough nurses, doctors and allied health professionals.

The UK Government recently revised its code of practice on international recruitment. This has opened up more than 100 countries that were previously off-limits to ‘active’ recruitment of their healthcare workers. We are very concerned by the questionable tactics of some ‘cowboy’ recruitment agencies who operate in this field, many of whom give misleading information to potential recruits. We are also worried by the potential for this decision to undermine the building of stronger health systems in developing countries.

And while we aim to attract healthcare workers, our own Government continues to pursue policies of the ‘hostile environment’ which make life more difficult for them once they arrive.

Many migrant health workers faced impoverishment during the Covid-19 pandemic if they faced an emergency because they had ‘No recourse to public funds.’ Many are unfairly separated from their families because of the Government’s harsh attitude towards family reunification.

In the workplace many continue to face racism, wider discrimination and unfair employment practices. Many report being unable to progress their careers fairly in the NHS and the operation of ‘repayment clauses’ forces some to remain in exploitative workplaces because they cannot afford to leave.

UNISON has many migrant healthcare workers as valued members of our union. This Conference agrees that it is time to make the UK truly a place where all of our colleagues can thrive. The UK must have a properly ethical approach to the international recruitment of healthcare workers.

Conference calls on the UNISON Health Team to;

1. Work to influence the UK Government and other relevant organisations, including the WHO, to implement stronger, enforceable safeguards to protect the rights of healthcare workers recruited from overseas; and to reduce the impact of regressive immigration policies on health and care workers

2. Lobby for healthcare workforce planning that reduces the need to recruit heavily from developing countries and, where it remains necessary, insist on a sustainable, reciprocal approach that supports these countries to develop their workforces and health systems

3. Engage with the Government, the NHS and other health and care employers to ensure migrant healthcare workers have the same rights as UK workers, and are treated respectfully, as individuals, supported to progress in their roles and to develop their full potential. This should include specially adapted transition and preceptorship programmes as part of their inductions

4. Work with other organisations to build a consensus and safeguards on the use and operation of ‘repayment clauses’ so they cannot be used to trap migrant health and care workers in exploitative workplaces

5. Together with elected lay members, establish a network for overseas members of our nursing family for peer support and to their development within our union

6. Build links with international organisations campaigning against the exploitation of migrant healthcare workers, working in close collaboration with the Black Member’s Self-Organised Group

7. Produce more resources for branches to support them to recruit and engage overseas health and care workers, encouraging stewards to undertake anti-racist and equalities training; and work with partner organisations and networks of migrant workers to ensure overseas health and care workers have access to UNISON membership at the earliest opportunity

8. Highlight and campaign to reduce the difficulties overseas healthcare workers face in finding suitable, affordable accommodation on their arrival in the UK

9. Encourage health and care employers to improve their awareness and understanding of cultural and language differences in the practices and beliefs of colleagues from overseas so they are treated equitably