Unite Community activists bulletin, 10 October 2014

By Robin Sivapalan, Unite Community London & Eastern Region Co-ordinator

We can be proud that Unite Community activists are playing such an important role in reshaping politics in London.

Last week, as part of the Boycott Workfare Week of Action, members protested outside 5 Job Centres in North London calling for an end to Sanctions. Members of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group protested outside the TUC and met with officials inside over the issue of Youth Traineeships which they fear entails TUC support for mandatory unpaid work for young people, which the TUC dispute. Unite Young members are also addressing the issue.

For a little light relief take a look at members of our Barnet Housing Action Group outside the Hendon Job Centre which they re-named the Sanctions Centre:

http://bambuser.com/v/4982755

No to MPIPM

Next week the world’s largest Property Fair, MPIPM, will be coming to London Olympia. Unite has produced a press briefing on this that will be covered in the Guardian. We need as many people as possible to take part in the BLOCK BORIS action at the opening of the event

• Opening protest – #BlockBoris: Wednesday 15 October from 9am, meet outside (Kensington Olympia) overground.

On the same day, PCS members will be on strike over pay, so please visit Job Centre picket lines if possible. It might be worth checking there’ll be a picket with the regional organiser Charlie beforehand if you’re going out of your way: charliemacdonaldpcs@gmail.com / 07803 717 709

Over Thursday 16^th and Friday 16^th a counter-conference is being held in central London, “Cities for People, Not for Profit:

• http://radicalhousingnetwork.org/mipim-uk/counter-conference/

TUC demo “Britain Needs a Pay Rise”: Join the Housing Bloc or the Unite Bloc on October 18^th. 11am Blackfriars, Embankment/

Unite Community members from around the country will be joining the TUC March; there will be new Unite Community membership forms that explain the kinds of things we are campaigning on. It is a good opportunity to build awareness of what we do as well as to join a mass show of opposition to the politics of Austerity. The unemployed, pensioners and students Need a Pay Rise too!

 

Modern Slavery Bill

Unite and Unite Community members, part of the Justice for Domestic Workers Campaign are appealing for our members’ help in writing to their MPs to secure support for an amendment that has been tabled to the Modern Slavery Bill that is being debated next Tuesday 14^th October. The template letter is attached; you can write to you MP here:  writetothem.com/

“Enabling migrant domestic workers to change employer and apply to renew their visa annually if in full time employment would be a significant step towards preventing abuses against migrant domestic workers, including forced labour, by their employers and enabling them to seek redress without fearing deportation from the UK. Human Rights Watch, Kalayaan and Unite Community strongly support this amendment and hope you will give it your vote.”

 

Please me send through your news and photos towards producing a newsletter, and please get in touch if you want to get more involved locally of in one of our working groups on Housing, Job Centres or Mental Health.

 

 

Hope to see you all soon

Robin Sivapalan

London and Eastern Community Co-ordinator

Robin.Sivapalan AT unitetheunion.org 

07860 955 361

When marriage is slavery — and UK laws perpetuate inhumanity

By Swheatie of the KUWG

After posting a Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group blog piece this afternoon about the need for people to write their MPs about the Modern Slavery Bill, I recalled a Community Care magazine article from 2006 about 'No Recourse to Public Funds' — known to social workers as 'NRPF'. (Community Care is a trade magazine for social care, and now exclusively online.) While the major UK political parties are saying that they will take the views of UKIP voters on board — and they conveniently ignore the question of why so few voted in the recent parliamentary by-elections — it is high time that someone helps make the public aware of how UK laws are already much too inhumane and why this blogger says, "Stuff UKIP's xenophobic and bigoted 'mission'. It is high time for UK voters and trade unions to get together to promote social justice rather than isolated self-interest. Unite Community is making a good start there, and so I'm glad to be part of it.

"But for far too long and under Labour Governments, trade unions have neglected to support the unwaged including disabled workers, and much of the exploitation that exists in 'work for your benefits' regimes in the UK started under Labour. And now the TUC has colluded with the Confederation of British Industry to promote a 'traineeships scheme' that, it has been argued, is really a form of workfare and could lead to the unpaid 'trainees' being sanctioned — especially given the names of the companies backing it."

Swheatie not backing UKIP in Clacton-on-Sea or anywhere else

Enough of that for a preface, time now to unveil the Community Care magazine I read back in 2006, now shared via the Community Care archives.

No recourse to public funds: the plight of refugees fleeing domestic violence.

November 22, 2006 in Children

Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on google_plusone_shareShare on linkedinMore Sharing Services

Hundreds of women arrive in the UK each year only to be trapped in violent relationships. They have two choices: stay put and remain at the mercy of their assailants, or escape and risk destitution. Mark Gould reports

Simran Kaur, a small gentle woman with a tiny, almost imperceptible, handshake, puts her hands to her face and sobs slow, silent tears. She is almost mute with trauma – unable to find words to describe the nine months of abuse and virtual solitary confinement she faced at the hands of an indifferent husband and his domineering mother from the day she arrived in Bristol from Delhi in December 2003.

Fragments of her story emerge in short sentences translated by her caseworker, Meena Patel. “I was kept in the dark in my room with the curtains closed. When I tried to open them my mother-in-law slapped me. I was vegetarian and she told me to eat meat. I lived on bread and water. When my mother or sister rang I was told I could not speak to them.”

She was even under pressure when she was left alone. On one occasion she was locked in the house and managed to set off security alarms by leaving her bedroom. Every year about 600 women who arrive in the UK as immigrants and asylum seekers are trapped in violent relationships.

Most are married to or have relationships with UK citizens or men who have indefinite leave to remain in the UK. A minority have come here as fiancées or dependants of students and workers or are here temporarily in their own right. Many of them have children who are British citizens. Their official status is NRPF – no recourse to public funds – which excludes them from benefits and housing entitlement. It also prevents them fleeing to a refuge as the rent is usually funded by housing benefit.

While abusive families are at fault for women such as Simran ending up in these situations, campaigners say their actions are compounded and encouraged by “inhuman and discriminatory” failings in the benefits  and immigration system which leaves them with no recourse to public funds. Due to a nightmarish catch-22, women – and some men – are left with the choice of leaving an abusive home and becoming destitute or staying and risking their lives.

Without the help of campaign group Southall Black Sisters, Simran, 26, would have had nowhere to turn; her insecure immigration status labels her NRPF, but she is unable to return to her family in India who see women as in some way culpable for an abusive relationship.

Pragna Patel, of the Southall Black Sisters management committee, says Simran’s story is a familiar one: “Women are  imprisoned as domestic or sexual slaves – by strangers or by their husbands and families who have absolute power over them.

They have the ultimate weapon – they say, ‘disobey and we can send you back’.”

In 2002, after an intense campaign led by Southall Black Sisters, the Home Office introduced the Domestic Violence Immigration Rule. This allows women who enter the UK as spouses or long-term partners of a British national or someone settled in this country – and who are subject to a two-year probationary period – to apply for residency if they can prove that domestic violence caused the relationship to break down. However, they still have no recourse to public funds.

Pragna Patel says the rule is an important step. But she says confused and frightened women like Simran cannot make use of it while trapped in an abusive relationship.

“The rule is too restrictive in terms of the evidence needed and in relation to the category of people who can use it. But the main reason why people do not use it is because they have no recourse to public funds. This means they don’t have the benefit money to pay for accommodation, food or other essentials and that means they are less likely to escape an abusive situation and less  likely to make a complaint about the abuse to the police. And that means perpetrators get away with it.”

Southall Black Sisters says the only solution is to abolish NRPF and has launched a campaign to that effect which has support from a range of women’s groups....

Continue reading this article on the Community Care website.....

See also:

Residence test on legal aid could cost councils millions | Community ... Sep 19, 2013 ... The No Recourse to Public Funds Network (NRPF) is part of the joint Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (DASS) and Association ... Sunday, 10 August 2014 More on TUC backing for workfare 'Ivy' of the KUWG has added a post script to the blog piece TUC backing for workfare. Perhaps that post script is worthy of a blog piece in its own right rather than an appendage position? "This cosy TUC and CBI backrub comes right after Ed Milliband’s announcement to cut benefits for 18 - 21 year olds, as revealed in The Guardian," she writes.....

Modern Slavery Bill in HoC, Tues 14 October 2014

Unite Community Coordinator, London Coalition Against Poverty activist and KUWG member Robin Sivapalan has written re the Modern Slavery Bill that will be discussed in the House of Commons next week. (See below.)

American topical songwriter Phil Ochs wrote in an anti-Vietnam War song 'What are You Fighting For':

Oh, there's many kinds of slavery, and we've found many more.
I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for.

In KUWG, we experience a form of slavery in the way we are treated at the jobcentre, etc via 'Active Labour Movement Policies' such as JobSeekers Allowance and the Work Related Activity Group of Employment & Support Allowance 'conditionality' with all their sanctioning power stripping us of bargaining power. Lobbying by global corporations who want to treat the world as their oyster by weakening citizens' safety nets to reduce the workforces' bargaining power is a major driving factor in the institution of 'Active Labour Movement Policies' into member countries of trading blocks.

But at least we still have citizenship rights and can use the ambient language to form links of solidarity with others in a similar situation and build solidarity. With and through that, we can advocate greater rights for all oppressed people as potential allies to one another rather than our oppressor's 'divide and rule' fodder.

On that note, while I hand over to Robin Sivapalan's message, I note that that there is some confusion over whether the Bill will be debated on Tuesday 14 October.

Swheatie of the KUWG

Robin writes:

"The Modern Slavery Bill is being debated next Tuesday 14th Oct in Parliament. It may be too late to sign this as organisations now, though it should be controversial, but please at least write to your MPs. [Swheatie notes: If you don't know your MP's contact details yet, you can check them out on the They Work For You.com website.]

 

I've copied in Marissa, the Justice for Domestic Workers co-ordinator, if you want more info. It really is an inspiring campaign, and could do with support more generally.

 

See: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Justice-for-Domestic-Workers/456016897839252

 

Solidarity

 

Robin

 

 

 

 

Dear XXXX MP,



We are writing to urge your support for David Hanson’s proposed amendment to the Modern Slavery Bill to strengthen protections for Overseas Domestic Workers;


To move the following Clause—

“Protection from slavery for overseas domestic workers

(1) All overseas and domestic workers including those working for staff of

diplomatic missions shall be entitled to—

(a) change their employer (but not work sector) while in the United

Kingdom;

(b) renew their domestic worker or diplomatic domestic worker visa , each such renewal being for

periods not exceeding twelve months as long as they remain in employment

and are able to support themselves without recourse to public

funds;

(c) a three month temporary visa permitting them to live in the United

Kingdom for the purposes of seeking alternative employment as an

overseas domestic worker where there is evidence that the worker has

been a victim of modern slavery.”



Enabling migrant domestic workers to change employer and apply to renew their visa annually if in full time employment would be a significant step towards preventing abuses against migrant domestic workers, including forced labour, by their employers and enabling them to seek redress without fearing deportation from the UK. Human Rights Watch, Kalayaan + XXXXX strongly support this amendment and hope you will give it your vote.



Evidence since the introduction of the tied ODW visa in 2012 demonstrates how the current tied visa system facilitates the abuse of migrant domestic workers in the UK and undermines the objectives of the Modern Slavery Bill to fight modern slavery and ensure perpetrators are held accountable for their crime. The report of the Joint Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill identified the 2012 policy changes as having ‘unintentionally strengthened the hand of the slave master against the victim of slavery’ and that "tying migrant domestic workers to their employer institutionalizes their abuse". This supports the evidence produced by Human Rights Watch in the report ‘Hidden Away: Abuses against Migrant Domestic Workers in the UK’ and Kalayaan’s briefing ‘Still enslaved: The migrant domestic workers who are trapped by the immigration rules’.



Our organisations believe that allowing migrant domestic workers to change employer and renew their domestic worker visa for up to twelve months at a time would greatly improve protections for this group of workers who are particularly vulnerable to abuse. We encourage members of the Public Bill Committee to vote in support of this amendment.



Yours sincerely



XXXXXXX