At the UNISON national health conference in Edinburgh, the union called for greater support and security for migrant workers in the NHS.
Calls for greater support and security for migrant workers in the NHS dominated the agenda at UNISON’s national health conference in Edinburgh.
Nearly one in five NHS staff are non-British nationals, and almost half of newly registered nurses have been trained overseas. Delegates noted that, without migrants, the NHS would fall apart.
The first motion, “migration makes our NHS work”, called on the union to lobby the home office and department of health to ensure that NHS workers are protected in changes to visa salary thresholds and called on the NHS not to abandon workers once visas expire.
Conference delegates also passed a motion for the union to develop a UNISON NHS Migrant Workers Charter to pledge fair treatment, ethical recruitment, visa security, safe working conditions, equal pay and career progression, strong union rights and transparent accountability for all migrant workers across NHS employers.
One in three doctors and nurses working in the UK has been trained overseas.
UNISON figures suggest that if the NHS had paid to train them, it would have cost the government £100,000-£120,000 per doctor and more than £20,000 per nurse.
This adds up to a cumulative £14 billion saving to the NHS in training costs based on workers currently in post.
Harmful rhetoric
“We face harmful rhetoric, we face immigration uncertainty. We face a system that sometimes makes us feel like we’re needed but not really wanted. How can the NHS depend on migrant workers, while migrant workers are made to feel disposable?” said Emmanuel Akinlose, speaking on behalf of North Devon and Exeter health branch.
Referring to migrant workers as “the heart” of the NHS, another motion called on the union to challenge hostile immigration policies.
The motion called for UNISON to urge the home office and NHS England to remove the increase to the visa salary threshold, which is the minimum annual salary that a foreign worker must be paid by a UK employer to qualify for a skilled worker visa.
The conference also passed a motion committing the union to challenge the increasingly xenophobic narratives pushed by right-wing media platforms, which, accompanied by immigration policy proposals, are creating hostile working conditions for migrant members.
At the end of March, the government launched an overhaul of the General Medical Council (GMC) to modernise the regulation of doctors.
A trigger was the rapid review by John Mann, Baron Mann, into antisemitism and other forms of racism in the health service, which the government commissioned in November.
