UK Migration — A Briefing for Trade Unions and Worker Representation

One of four stakeholder briefings, written from inside the trade-union perspective on UK migration policy. The position worker representation typically holds: wage compression, displacement risk, tied-visa exploitation, sectoral bargaining, training investment. The companion piece to the business briefing — on questions where union and employer positions converge and where they diverge.

VII.1b — Trade Union and Worker Representation Briefing

Migration policy from the labour movement perspective

For: TUC, Unison, Unite, GMB, USDAW, Royal College of Nursing, sectoral trade unions, employee representative bodies Premise: This briefing is written from inside the trade union perspective on UK migration policy. It uses the available data to engage with worker-side concerns about wages, conditions, exploitation, organising rights, and the structural use of migration as a tool of labour discipline. It does not advocate the positions of any political party. The trade union perspective has historically held tensions within itself — between defending domestic workers from wage compression and defending migrant workers from exploitation — and this briefing engages with both honestly.

The position you hold

The labour movement's position on migration has been internally contested for over a century. The TUC's modern position is broadly: support for migrant workers' rights and integration, opposition to migration being used as a mechanism for wage suppression or undermining of collective bargaining, and concern about specific sectoral conditions (care, agriculture, hospitality, construction) where migration interacts with low pay and weak organising rights.

That position sits in tension with two adjacent positions held by parts of the labour movement and the Labour Party tradition:

• The Blue Labour / "somewhere not anywhere" strand, which gives more weight to community cohesion and pace of change concerns and is sceptical of the cosmopolitan-liberal labour position.
• The open borders / migrant solidarity strand, which gives more weight to refugee protection and freedom of movement and is sceptical of any framing that distinguishes domestic worker interest from migrant worker interest.

The mainstream TUC and major union position sits between these poles: migration policy should protect all workers from exploitation, and the way to do that is through robust labour standards, strong unions, and removing the legal architecture that makes migrant workers structurally vulnerable to abuse. The most consequential policy in this view is not migration restriction; it is the tied visa system that gives employers disproportionate power over migrant workers' immigration status.

Where the evidence supports the trade union concern

The tied visa system is structurally exploitative. The Skilled Worker visa, the Health and Care Worker visa, and the Seasonal Worker visa all link a migrant worker's right to remain in the UK to a specific employer (or, for seasonal work, a specific scheme operator). Workers who lose their job have a 60-day grace period before facing removal. The structural effect: workers cannot organise, cannot raise grievances, cannot whistleblow on safety violations, and cannot leave abusive employers without risking their entire immigration status.

The data is substantial:

• The Health and Care Worker visa abuse documented through 2023-2025: thousands of revoked sponsor licences, workers paid below the minimum wage, workers found unemployed because the sponsoring employer had no actual work, modern slavery prosecutions linked to specific care providers
• Modern Slavery Helpline calls from migrant workers in care, agriculture, hospitality, and food processing have risen substantially through 2022-2025
• Seasonal Worker scheme audits have documented housing conditions below statutory standard, illegal deductions from wages, and retaliation against workers who raised complaints
• The Labour Behind the Label and Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) reporting on the structural mechanism: visa sponsorship as employer leverage over worker freedom

This is not a problem of bad employers; it is a problem of policy design that creates opportunities for bad employers and constrains workers from challenging them.

Wage compression evidence in specific sub-sectors is real. The aggregate migration-wage literature finds modest aggregate effects, but sub-sectoral effects are more substantial. The Bank of England 2018 staff working paper found small but measurable negative wage effects on lower-paid native workers concentrated in specific sectors. The Migration Advisory Committee 2018 EEA report identified semi-skilled and low-skilled sectors with measurable wage effects. The Resolution Foundation's recent work on low-paid sectors finds that migration interacts with weak collective bargaining infrastructure to produce wage stagnation, particularly in care, hospitality, and food processing.

The trade union position is not that migration causes low pay; it is that migration in the absence of strong sectoral bargaining makes existing low pay harder to fix. Sectors with strong union density (NHS, manufacturing where it remains unionised, transport) have experienced migration without the same wage compression effects. Sectors with weak density (care, hospitality, agriculture, retail) have experienced both substantial migration and persistent low-pay traps.

The training underinvestment is a worker issue. Employers' substitution of overseas recruitment for domestic training is a worker issue twice over: it suppresses wages by expanding labour supply without expanding skills, and it removes the route into skilled work for domestic workers in lower-paid jobs. The Apprenticeship Levy underspend, the FE college funding crisis, and the closure of mid-level technical training routes are all relevant. Migration policy without parallel training policy entrenches a two-tier labour market.

The asylum seeker right-to-work case is a labour movement case as much as a humanitarian one. Asylum seekers barred from working for 12+ months are pushed into the informal economy, where exploitation is endemic and where they undercut formal-sector wages and conditions. The Lift the Ban coalition has documented this for years. From a trade union perspective, allowing asylum seekers the right to work in the formal sector is protective of organised labour standards, not threatening to them. The German evidence — that work rights for asylum seekers reduce crime and improve integration — also reduces the informal-economy undercut of formal labour standards.

The right to organise is being undermined for migrant workers specifically. Sponsor licence checks, visa renewal scrutiny, and the implicit threat of immigration enforcement all reduce migrant workers' practical ability to join unions, raise grievances, or take industrial action. Where migrant workers are a substantial share of the workforce (care, hospitality, food processing, parts of construction and logistics), this weakens the union position for all workers in those sectors.

Where the evidence requires sharpening of the trade union position

The "open borders solves exploitation" position is not supported by the evidence. Some on the labour-movement left argue that exploitation flows from immigration restriction, and that removing restriction removes exploitation. The evidence is more complicated. Tied visa systems exist because of specific design choices, not because immigration is restricted in general. Removing tied-visa structures within the current restriction framework is a more direct fix than open borders. The trade union case is strongest when it focuses on the policy mechanism producing exploitation, not on the broader frame of restriction.

The wage compression argument needs to engage with the route-level fiscal data. Skilled Worker main applicants are positive fiscal contributors and are paid well above the median. The wage compression case applies to specific lower-paid routes (Health and Care Worker dependants in some sub-sectors, Seasonal Worker, parts of the Skilled Worker route below RQF 6 before May 2025) — not migration in aggregate. Trade union arguments that conflate these routes weaken the credibility of the specific case for sectoral protection.

The "British workers first" framing is contested within the labour movement. Some unions have used this framing politically (the 2009 Lindsey Oil Refinery wildcat strike around "British jobs for British workers" is the canonical example). Other unions have rejected it strongly. The TUC's modern position generally rejects the framing because it produces solidarity costs (migrant workers excluded from union protection become an undercutting workforce) and because it provides cover for employer strategies that pit workers against each other. The trade union position is strongest when it identifies the employer and the policy framework as the source of exploitation, not the migrant worker.

The integration argument is part of the labour case. Where migrant workers are integrated into the wider workforce — through union membership, language support, recognised qualifications, and equal employment rights — sectoral wage effects are smaller and the labour movement is stronger. The Danish trade union model (high union density, sectoral bargaining, strong integration spending) shows what this looks like in practice. The UK has weakened or abandoned several of the structural conditions that made this work in the post-war period; rebuilding them is part of the labour case.

The asylum hotel question is genuinely difficult. Some communities where asylum hotels have been placed are also communities where union members live and work. Concerns about local labour market effects, schools, GP services, and community safety are not all displaced concerns; some are real. The trade union position is strongest when it engages with these concerns substantively rather than treating them as illegitimate. The argument should be: the way to address community concerns is through proper resourcing of local services, dispersal funding, and faster asylum decisions — not through restriction-by-default.

What trade unions need from migration policy

End the tied visa system. The single highest-value policy change from a worker-protection perspective is to break the link between specific employer sponsorship and the right to remain. Sectoral visas (allowing workers to move between employers within a sector) eliminate the disproportionate employer leverage. The Seasonal Worker scheme can be reformed with portable rights. The Health and Care Worker visa should allow within-sector mobility. The Skilled Worker visa can have a longer grace period for finding new sponsorship. None of these requires reducing migration; all reduce exploitation.

Right to work for asylum seekers within six months of application. From a trade union perspective this is a labour standards measure. Workers in the formal economy are protected by minimum wage law, working time regulations, health and safety, and (potentially) union membership. Workers in the informal economy are not. Moving asylum seekers from informal to formal employment strengthens labour standards across the affected sectors.

Sectoral collective bargaining. Migration policy interacts with collective bargaining infrastructure. Where sectoral bargaining exists (in NHS pay, in some manufacturing, increasingly in some care home groups), wage floors are robust and migration does not erode them. Where it does not, wage floors are minimum wage and are fragile. The Fair Work Agency proposed under the Employment Rights Bill 2024-25 is part of this; sectoral bargaining at scale is what is needed.

Migration impact assessment of labour standards changes. The Labour Market Evidence Group includes employer voice but trade union voice is weaker. Migration policy decisions affect workers directly; trade union representation in LMEG, MAC, and Home Office sectoral consultation should be substantive, not formal.

Domestic training investment proportional to migration access. Where sectors retain migration access, the employer side should be required to demonstrate concrete training investment matching that access. The Apprenticeship Levy should be reformed to ensure it actually delivers training in the sectors where migration is concentrated, not just in sectors with strong existing apprenticeship cultures.

Enforcement of labour standards on migrant workers. Modern slavery investigation, sponsor compliance, and minimum wage enforcement should be properly resourced and should operate independently of immigration enforcement so that migrant workers can report exploitation without fear of immigration consequences. The "firewall" between labour standards enforcement and immigration enforcement is the international best-practice model and is not currently in place in the UK.

Three things for the trade union community to do in the next twelve months

1. Lead the case against tied visas. The TUC should consolidate the modern slavery, exploitation, and labour standards evidence into a single argument for ending tied visa structures across all relevant routes. This is a labour movement issue that can build cross-party support — from Lib Dem, Green, and parts of Labour through to Conservative members concerned about modern slavery — and it directly addresses the most concentrated source of migrant worker exploitation.

2. Build the sectoral bargaining argument. The labour movement's strongest counter to wage compression is sectoral bargaining. Care, hospitality, food processing, and parts of construction are the priority sectors. Linking migration access to sectoral bargaining infrastructure (so migration is granted to sectors with bargaining frameworks rather than sectors with weak floors) is a labour-movement-led migration policy direction that has not been articulated at scale.

3. Engage substantively with community concerns. Some union members live in communities under asylum hotel pressure. Trade union organisations that engage with these concerns through service-resourcing and local-government funding arguments — rather than treating them as illegitimate — strengthen the labour movement's credibility on migration. The TUC and major unions should produce material that gives shop stewards and local organisers concrete responses to community concerns that are consistent with both worker-protection principles and migrant solidarity.

These together position the trade union movement as a serious voice on migration policy that engages with both the economic and the worker-protection dimensions, rather than ceding the debate to employer voice on one side and restrictionist political voice on the other.

The relationship to the employer briefing

The employer briefing (VII.1a) and this trade union briefing (VII.1b) make different cases that overlap on some specific policy areas:

Where employer and union interests converge: training investment matched to migration access; sectoral consultation that is substantive; predictability of policy; opposition to crude numerical caps; opposition to the worst features of frequent ad hoc rule changes; recognition that workforce planning requires multi-year horizons.

Where they diverge: the tied visa question (employers benefit from sponsorship leverage; unions oppose it); the wage compression question (employers minimise it; unions emphasise specific sub-sectors); the asylum right-to-work question (some employers oppose it on competition-with-domestic grounds, but most union positions support it); the sectoral bargaining question (most employers oppose it; unions support it).

Where a productive bargain might exist: sustainable migration access in exchange for sectoral bargaining frameworks, sponsor structure reform, and visible domestic training investment. This is the Danish model in compressed form. It would require political infrastructure (Labour Market Evidence Group with real authority; Fair Work Agency with proper enforcement powers) that does not yet exist at scale, but which the current Parliament has the legislative space to create.

The labour movement and the employer community typically operate as opposing voices in migration policy debate. There are areas where they could operate as constructive partners — and areas where the underlying interests genuinely conflict. Honest distinction between the two is more useful than rhetorical alliance.