Female migrant workers are worst paid

Recent migrant workers are more than twice as likely as other workers to be earning less than the minimum wage for their age group and female migrants are most at risk, according to new research commissioned by the TUC’s Commission on Vulnerable Employment.

General secretary Brendan Barber said: “The rogue employers who underpay the National Minimum Wage [NMW] deserve zero tolerance. The NMW is making a real difference to the lives of many low paid workers, and we must continue to crack down on those mean bosses not paying their staff the level wage to which they are entitled.”

A wider picture of disadvantage emerges from the research, based on data covering the pay, working hours, type of work and accommodation of migrants living and working in the UK for less than 10 years.

Focusing on areas of high migration (the West Midlands and East of England/East Midlands) it revealed that migrants’ working hours are longer and that they are more likely to be working as temps or in other insecure work.

Women who are recent migrants are one and a half times more likely than their male counterparts to be paid less than the minimum wage, affecting an estimated 35,000 such workers, the TUC calculates.

Migrant workers and vulnerable employment: A review of existing data. www.vulnerableworkers.org.uk/cove-evidence-gathering/cove-research