{"id":613882,"date":"2026-05-31T15:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/613882\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T15:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:50:09","slug":"indian-man-awarded-almost-30000-after-uk-employer-failed-to-provide-work-employment-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/613882\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian man awarded almost \u00a330,000 after UK employer failed to provide work | Employment law"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Indian citizen who came to the UK to work as a care worker through the post-Brexit visa scheme<\/a> has been awarded nearly \u00a330,000 in a landmark case, because his employer failed to give him a single day of work for a year.<\/p>\n

An employment tribunal ordered the care company Swan Care Solutions Ltd to pay Shabin Shaji wages for the work he was \u201cready, able and willing to do\u201d.<\/p>\n

Believing there was a \u201cmajor shortage\u201d of healthcare workers in the UK, Shaji emigrated from Kerala to Stafford, England<\/a>, bought a car for the job and undertook online training in 2023.<\/p>\n

He told the tribunal that before arriving in the UK, he had sought advice from a YouTube influencer on securing work in the UK.<\/p>\n

She connected him with agents whom he paid \u00a317,000, before he was interviewed for a role at Swan Care Solutions on WhatsApp, the tribunal heard.<\/p>\n

Shaji was then given a certificate of sponsorship, entitling him to live and work in the UK with Swan Care Solutions as his Home Office-approved sponsoring employer.<\/p>\n

But the computer science graduate, who had previously worked in healthcare in India, ended up in destitution after his Staffordshire-based employer did not give him any shifts, despite his repeated pleas.<\/p>\n

His sponsored visa prevented him from working for anyone else for more than 20 hours a week. He eventually managed to secure sponsorship from another employer in April 2024 \u2013 a year after his arrival in the UK \u2013 but he later returned to India in ill health.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old won his pay claim after seeking help from the employment justice charity Work Rights Centre, which said \u201cthousands of people\u201d had paid money to recruiters, \u201conly to arrive in the UK to be ghosted\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dora-Olivia Vicol, the charity\u2019s chief executive, added: \u201cWe\u2019ve seen case after case of migrant care workers sold a dream in Britain, leaving their careers and families behind, only to find destitution and abandonment by their employer and the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe skilled worker visa must be entirely reformed to make it easier to change employers when rights or contracts are breached.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tribunal heard that Swan Care Solutions\u2019 staff suggested Shaji take cash-in-hand jobs and use a food bank when he said he was struggling, telling him they would be in touch when it was his \u201cturn\u201d.<\/p>\n

At a hearing in May the company was ordered to pay \u00a38,700 in costs \u2013 on top of the \u00a328,843.54 it was ordered to pay him in wages and holiday pay, plus remedy for failure to provide him with a written contract and non-compliance with grievance procedures.<\/p>\n

At a hearing in Birmingham earlier this year, the employment judge Kate Edmonds said: \u201cThe claimant had done what needed to be done to start work \u2026 He was now in the country, with the right permissions, and living in the right location. However, the respondent did not provide him with work, nor did they pay him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat in effect the respondent was doing, was treating the claimant as a zero-hours worker \u2026 The problem, of course, was that the claimant was not a zero-hours worker.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe respondent withheld work from him \u2026 There was therefore an unauthorised deduction from his wages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shaji said: \u201cI was broke and had to rely on charity. I drank tap water and bought bread close to its expiration date to survive [and] looked around local shops in Stafford for free bananas and bread for those who were struggling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI attended church and on Sundays after worship, the good people who attend the worship shared with me some snacks with tea, for which I am very grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cI thought it would be a great opportunity, but when I came to the UK I found immigrants and British people struggling. I was in a terrible situation, feeling like no one in authority cared if I lived or died.\u201d<\/p>\n

He told the hearing that Swan Care Solutions\u2019 actions had \u201cserious long-term detrimental effects on my personal and family finances\u201d.<\/p>\n

Judge Edmonds said while it was \u201cnot entirely clear\u201d how Shaji initially came to be in contact with Swan Care Solutions, it was clear he \u201cwas in touch with individuals with whom he appears to have transferred some money\u201d.<\/p>\n

The judge added that Swan Care Solutions\u2019 licence to issue certificates of sponsorship had been \u201cultimately revoked\u201d in 2024, in part because it did not pay workers until training had been completed.<\/p>\n

Swan Care Solutions did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Indian citizen who came to the UK to work as a care worker through the post-Brexit visa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-613882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}