March 2026 Newsletter: What can we learn from Australia’s Workplace Justice Visa?
March 31, 2026
The UK government promised that the Employment Rights Act would bring about the biggest upgrade to workers rights in a generation, using the new Fair Work Agency to regulate the labour market.
And yet the UK labour market remains reliant on restrictive work visas. These visas limit the options that workers have to bring complaints against their employer, on whom they also depend for their immigration status.
How can workers rights be upgraded when restrictive visas block rights for so many migrant workers? Is this upgrading, or creating a multi-tiered workforce?
In July 2024, Australia started piloting a bridging visa that allows people on temporary visas, who have experienced exploitation at work, to stay in the country for up to 12 months in order to work and seek redress for their exploitation.
As this pilot in Australia nears 2 years, important lessons are already obvious. The UK should implement its own Workplace Justice Visa, to effectively tackle labour exploitation and meaningfully improve the employment rights landscape.
“Fair For All Workers”, a new briefing by the Labour Exploitation Advisory Group (LEAG), reflects on the implementation of the Workplace Justice Visa in Australia, and on learning for the UK.
Barriers to Disclosure: A survivor of trafficking’s journey through the immigration process
Some in government insist that claims of modern slavery are simply being used to get in the way of deportation attempts. But this misses that claims of modern slavery are met with huge barriers in immigration detention.
These claims are not made easily as a means to avoid deportation; there is every barrier to them being made whatsoever.
The Detention Taskforce’s new briefing, “Barriers to Disclosure: A survivor of trafficking’s journey through the immigration process”, details these barriers that victims and survivors face.
Rather than criticising victims for being identified late, we must address the barriers that prevent disclosure of trafficking.
In Case You Missed It: From Philippine’s Coast to UK Waters: Interviews with local fishers with experience in the UK
“When I began my fieldwork on Filipino migrant fishers who had worked in the UK, I knew the stories would be interesting, rich and complex. What I didn’t anticipate was just how difficult it would be to find the very people whose experiences I hoped to capture.”
In this guest blog for Focus on Labour Exploitation, researcher Kookie Gutierrez reflects on the challenges faced when engaging with Filipino migrant fishers and their experiences on UK vessels.
These difficulties might be hard to overcome, but present the very reason why this work is so important.