Indian man receives almost £30,000 after UK employer fails to provide him with job | employment law

An Indian citizen who came to the UK to work as a carer through the post-Brexit visa scheme has been awarded nearly £30,000 in a landmark case after his employer refused to allow him to work a single day in a year.

An employment tribunal ordered care company Swan Care Solutions Ltd to pay Shabin Shaji for work he was “ready, able and willing” to do.

Determined that there was a ‘serious shortage’ of medical staff in the UK, Shaji moved from Kerala to Stafford, UK, bought a car for the job and began training online in 2023.

He told the tribunal that before arriving in the UK he had sought advice from a YouTube influencer about securing work in the country.

She connected him with an agent who paid him £17,000 before he was interviewed for a role at Swan Care Solutions on WhatsApp, the tribunal heard.

Shaji then received a Certificate of Sponsorship, which made him eligible to live and work in the UK with Swan Care Solutions as a sponsoring employer approved by the Home Office.

But the computer science graduate, who previously worked in healthcare in India, ended up in poverty after his Staffordshire-based employer refused to allow him to work any shifts despite repeated pleas.

His sponsorship visa prevented him from working for anyone more than 20 hours a week. He eventually secured sponsorship from another employer in April 2024, a year after arriving in the UK, but later returned to India due to poor health.

The 33-year-old won his claim for benefits after seeking help from employment justice charity Work Rights Centre. The Work Rights Center said “thousands of people” had paid recruiters but “arrived in the UK to become ghosts”.

Dora-Olivia Vicol, the charity’s chief executive, said: “We have seen case after case in the UK of migrant workers selling their dreams, leaving behind their jobs and families, only to be destitute and abandoned by their employers and the state.”

“Skilled worker visas must be completely reformed to make it easier to change employers when rights or contracts are breached.”

The tribunal heard that when staff at Swan Care Solutions told Shaji he was struggling, he offered to work for cash and use a food bank and said they would contact him when it was his “turn”.

At a hearing in May the company was ordered to pay £8,700 in costs. In addition to the £28,843.54, he was also ordered to pay wages and holiday pay and relief for failing to provide a written contract or comply with grievance procedures.

At a hearing in Birmingham earlier this year, employment judge Kate Edmonds said: “The claimant did what he had to do to start work… he was now in the country with the right permits and living in the right location. But the defendant did not offer him the job and did not pay him.”

“As a result, what the defendant did was treat the claimant as a zero-hours worker. The problem, of course, is that the claimant was not a zero-hours worker.

“The defendant withheld work from him. Therefore, there were unauthorized deductions from his wages.”

“I was poor and had to rely on charity,” said Shaji. “To survive, I drank tap water and bought bread that was close to its expiration date.” [and] We searched local stores in Stafford to find free bananas and bread for those struggling.

“I went to church, and after the Sunday service, the good people who attended gave me tea and snacks, so I was very grateful.”

He added: “I thought it was a great opportunity, but when I came to the UK I discovered the difficulties immigrants and British people were going through. I was in a terrible situation where no one in authority seemed to care whether I lived or died.”

He told the hearing that Swan Care Solutions’ actions “had a serious long-term detrimental impact on personal and family finances”.

Judge Edmonds said it was “not entirely clear” how Shaji came into contact with Swan Care Solutions in the first place, but it was clear he “came into contact with the individual who appears to have transferred the money”.

The judge added that Swan Care Solutions’ license to issue sponsorship certificates was “ultimately revoked” in 2024, in part because workers were not paid until training was completed.

Swan Care Solutions did not respond to a request for comment.

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