Care workers face exploitation through excessive hours and poor pay, according to a new report from Oxfam and migrant domestic worker charity Kalayaan.

The report found that one in five care workers are paid below minimum wage, while some workers’ working week varies between 60 and 100 hours a week.

The report also found that workers faced non-payment of holiday and sick pay, extreme pressure to do overtime as well as an expectation to be constantly on call, unfair expenses including deductions for petrol to visit clients in their own homes, and for uniforms and other work materials, taking salaries below minimum wage.

Workers also felt dependent on employers due to housing tied to employment and claimed agencies were encouraging workers to designate themselves ‘self-employed’, denying them guaranteed work and rights and deliberately underpaying workers by paying for 11 hours, rather than 12 hours worked.

Kate Wareing, Oxfam’s director of UK Poverty, says: “Employers and agencies in the care sector are increasingly turning to migrant workers, exploiting their vulnerabilities in order to keep costs down and compete with other care providers.

“There is a fundamental lack of workers’ rights because labour providers are ineffectively regulated by a raft of different agencies. If the Gangmasters Licensing Act’s remit was extended to cover the care industry then we’d see better protection for the most vulnerable workers.”

Anne Fairweather, the REC’s head of public policy, says: “Boiling down a series of complex issues, which in virtually all cases involve breaches of the law, to a call for an extension of the licensing of recruitment agencies is missing the point.  

“If we are going to be serious about tackling issue of exploitation, in both the agency and directly employed sector, then we need to get to the root of the problem.”