Our Campaign
The Pre-2012 Overseas Domestic Worker visa kept migrant domestic workers visible, legal, and able to seek assistance from the authorities. The original Overseas Domestic Worker (ODW) visa worked well to give visa holders options to access employment law remedies and change employers if their rights were abused. While the 2012 changes to the immigration rules which removed the right to change employer left domestic workers unable to access employment law or even to withdraw their labour and so challenge abuse, the existence of the Overseas Domestic Worker visa still provides some protection to domestic workers in the form of recognition as workers, albeit now with a limited and short term right to change employers. Removal of the route in its entirety would not prevent people from bringing domestic workers to the UK and exploiting them but instead would drive these employment relationships underground, decreasing the workers' access to justice and increasing the risk of abuse. The original Overseas Domestic Worker (ODW) visa worked well to give visa holders options to access employment law remedies and change employers if their rights were abused.
The ILO’s 2006 Multilateral Framework on Labour Migration: Non-binding principles and guidelines for a rights-based approach to labour migration highlight the pre-2012 ODW visa as an example of best practice for prevention of and protection against abusive migration practices: wcms_146243.pdf (ilo.org) (page 67).
The changes to the immigration rules which were introduced in April 2012 undermined the ability of people on the Overseas Domestic Worker visa to challenge abuse and thus led again to an increase in abuse of migrant domestic workers in the UK. The Voice of Domestic Workers together with our allies continue to condemn this removal of rights, which have not been addressed by the 2015 Modern Slavery Act or the 2016 Immigration Act. Despite this, it is clear that the removal of the Overseas Domestic Worker visa would in effect be a wholesale removal of all rights of migrant domestic workers in the UK.
The Voice of Domestic Workers is calling for urgent changes;
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A reversion to the Overseas Domestic Worker visa that existed before 2012 that allowed domestic workers to change employers and renew the visa for an unlimited time, provided they were in full-time employment as a domestic worker in a private household
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The criminal offence for undocumented workers in the Immigration Act (2016) is to be repealed and employment rights separated from immigration status so workers can claim their employment rights regarding less status.
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The ratification and implementation of ILO C189, Decent Work for Domestic Workers - recognition of domestic work as work and domestic workers as workers for significant contribution of domestic workers to the economy. Domestic work enables others to work.
