Every day, there are a significant number of workers being exploited for their labour in the UK. Labour exploitation is currently the highest reported form of adult modern slavery in the UK, and the numbers continue to grow. With the UK’s growing reliance on short term and restrictive visas, migrant workers are increasingly at risk.

Preventing labour exploitation for migrant workers must therefore be at the top of the workers’ rights agenda.

With a Fair Work Agency on the horizon, there is real potential for improvements to be made. But for these to become a reality, the systematic barriers to reporting exploitation and finding solutions must be understood and resolved.

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FLEX’s work with Voice of Domestic Workers

This month, FLEX staff staff met with Voice of Domestic Workers to discuss the intersecting challenges of employment and migration.

Together, we also looked at how the government’s upcoming Fair Work Agency needs to work, for domestic workers to be able to work without risk of exploitation.

Director of Voice of Domestic Workers Marissa Begonia also wrote for FLEX, exploring the history of the Overseas Domestic Worker visa, and what essential changes are needed for workers to challenge exploitation and slavery.

Read Marissa’s piece:

October 13, 2025

Anti-Slavery Day 2025 Guest Blog: Marissa Begonia, Voice of Domestic Workers

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In Case You Missed It: Uneven fields: women workers’ experiences of the Seasonal Worker Scheme

The UK’s Seasonal Worker Scheme was introduced to address shortages in the agricultural labour market. As the scheme has gone on, significant concerns have been raised about the design of the scheme, and the way that it facilitates exploitation.

One of the things that has gone unaddressed for too long are the ways in which the scheme puts women workers at particular risk of harm and exploitation. Our recent briefing directly confronts the realities migrant women are facing in the fields. The result should raise grave concerns, including to the government.

While many of the problems faced by seasonal workers are experienced by workers of all genders – such as risks of debt bondage, insufficient hours and problems raising complaints – women are often hit harder than men by these issues.

But it’s not just these general problems that women in the scheme face; the gendered dynamics within the system also create specific, unique risks for women workers. In this way, women on the scheme are pushed to the margins of an already precarious workforce; it is time we paid attention.