The Family Worker Exemption: Still in place and still driving exploitation a year after the government pledged to remove it
One full year after the government pledged to remove a loophole for the exploitation of mainly female workers, the Family Worker Exemption remains in place. We urge the government to act without further delay to remove this exemption.
The exemption in the National Minimum Wage Regulations allows live-in domestic workers to be paid little or nothing at all, where they are treated as ‘a member of the family’. Over the years, it has been regularly used by abusive employers to exploit their workers and evade justice.
In October 2021, the Low Pay Commission found that the exemption was ‘not fit for purpose’ and recommended to the government it be removed.1
On 10 March 2022, Paul Scully MP, then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, announced that the exemption would be removed ‘when parliamentary time allows.’2
We welcomed this decision yet, one full year later, the exemption remains and continues to be used by abusive employers to deny vulnerable women a proper salary for their work.
We are calling for this egregious loophole to be closed now.
Yours sincerely,
Victoria Marks (Director, Anti Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit (ATLEU))
Leticia Dias (Coordinator, Nanny Solidarity Network)
Marissa Begonia (Director, Voice of Domestic Workers)
Sara Mendes (Chair, IWGB Nannies & Au Pairs branch)
Rita Gava (Director, Kalayaan)
Susan Cueva (Kanlungan Filipino Consortium)
Lucila Granada (CEO, Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX))
Mary-Ann Stephenson (Director, Womens Budget Group)
Jasmine O’Connor (CEO, Anti-Slavery International)
Joanna Ewart-James (Executive Director, Freedom United)
Gisela Valle (Director, Latin American Women’s Rights Service - (LAWRS)) Brian Dikoff (Legal Organiser, Migrants Organise)
Mariko Hayashi (Executive Director, Southeast and East Asian Centre (SEEAC))
Maya Linstrum Newman (Global Alliance against Traffic in Women (GAATW))
Tim Nelson (CEO, Hope for Justice)
Kate Bell (Assistant General Secretary, Trades Union Congress (TUC))
1 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1028738/LPC_summary_of_findings_2021_A.pdf, p192https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-03-10/debates/bb8249f8-3123-46aa-9536-c27452ff5cea/DraftNationalMinimumWage(Amendment)Regulati ons2022
Diana Holland (Assistant General Secretary, Unite)
Sampson Low (Head of Policy, UNISON)
Urmila Bhoola (former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary forms of Slavery)
Dame Sara Thornton (former UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner)
Dr Natalie Sedacca (Assistant Professor in Employment Law, Durham University) Professor Virginia Mantouvalou (UCL Laws and Chair of Kalayaan) Professor Rosie Cox (Birkbeck, University of London)
Tonia Novitz (Professor of Labour Law, University of Bristol)
Dr Maayan Niezna (Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Modern Slavery and Human Rights, University of Oxford)
Dr Lisa Rodgers (Associate Professor of Labour Law, University of Leicester) Ruth Dukes (Professor of Labour Law, University of Glasgow)
Dr Louisa Acciari (Senior Research Fellow in Gender and Disaster, UCL) Professor Hugh Collins (London School of Economics, personal capacity)
Dr Vera Pavlou (Lecturer in Labour Law, University of Glasgow)
Professor Lydia Hayes (Professor of Labour Rights, University of Liverpool)
Dr Inga Thiemann (Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Exeter)
Dr Joyce Jiang (Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management, University of York)
https://atleu.org.uk/news/2023/3/9/family-worker-exemption-still-driving-exploitation
