I published a guest blog recently about modern day slavery in the sex industry (and how landlords can help stop it) but modern day slavery is not limited to sex workers. There are also many domestic workers who are effectively slaves.
Kalayaan is an organisation which fights for justice for migrant domestic workers. For example, one of their current campaigns is about domestic workers trafficked by diplomats.
Their work is explained in this extract from a recent article in the Guardian:
The London-based charity Kalayaan is the only one in the country that deals specifically with migrant domestic workers; it saw 356 clients in 2009, and says it is impossible to guess the full extent of the problem.
Of those the charity saw last year, 59% said they had not been allowed out of the house they were working in without being supervised by their employer’s family. Many had little or no privacy; 57% didn’t have their own room, and had to sleep in rooms with the children they cared for, or on sofas and floors.
A shocking 17% of respondents reported that they had been physically assaulted, and 58% had had their passports kept from them, ensuring they lived in fear of being caught by police without the documents that prove they are in the UK legally. More than half of the new workers who registered with the charity were given no time off at all.
To find out more, see their web-site www.kalayaan.org.uk.
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