Workplace Discrimination for Immigrants in the UK

Which Law Applies to You

Equality law is not the same across the United Kingdom, and most guidance you will find online quietly assumes the English position.

• England, Scotland and Wales: the Equality Act 2010, enforced through employment tribunals, with the Equality and Human Rights Commission as regulator
• Northern Ireland: not covered by the Equality Act 2010. A separate set of laws covers race, sex, disability, religious belief and political opinion, enforced through industrial tribunals and the Fair Employment Tribunal, with the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland as regulator

The rest of this guide describes the Equality Act position. If you work in Northern Ireland, the shape of the protection is similar but the statute, the tribunal, the regulator and some of the deadlines are different. Northern Ireland publishes its own guidance, and that is what governs there.

The Nine Protected Characteristics

GOV.UK lists nine characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Marriage and civil partnership
• Pregnancy and maternity
• Race — which GOV.UK says includes colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origin
• Religion or belief
• Sex
• Sexual orientation

Immigration status is not on that list. Nor is needing a visa, needing sponsorship, or being new to the country. That is not a gap you can talk round: a claim has to be tied to one of the nine. In practice, unfair treatment of migrant workers is usually brought as race discrimination, because race includes nationality and national origin.

The protection covers job applicants as well as people already in post, and it covers recruitment, pay, terms and conditions, promotion, training and dismissal. It also covers being treated badly because you are associated with someone who has a protected characteristic, and being treated badly because you complained about discrimination. See the GOV.UK discrimination rights page.

The Four Forms It Takes

• Direct discrimination: being treated worse than someone else because of a protected characteristic — being passed over for promotion because of where you are from
• Indirect discrimination: a rule or practice that applies to everyone but puts people sharing a characteristic at a particular disadvantage, and that the employer cannot justify
• Harassment: unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic that violates your dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment — remarks about your accent, your name or your country fall here
• Victimisation: being treated badly because you complained about discrimination, or supported someone else who did

Reasonable Adjustments Are a Disability Duty

This is widely misunderstood, so it is worth stating plainly. UK equality law contains no general duty to accommodate a protected characteristic. The reasonable adjustments duty exists for disability and for nothing else.

GOV.UK says employers must make reasonable adjustments so that workers with disabilities, or physical or mental health conditions, are not substantially disadvantaged when doing their jobs, and that this applies to all workers, including trainees, apprentices, contract workers and business partners. The guidance is on GOV.UK.

For other characteristics — religious observance, for example — a refusal to accommodate is not automatically unlawful in itself. It would have to be brought as indirect discrimination or harassment, with the employer able to argue the practice was justified.

Sponsorship Is Not the Same as Nationality

The distinction that comes up most often for people on work visas is between an employer's position on sponsorship and an employer's position on you.

• An employer that holds no sponsor licence, or declines to sponsor at all, is deciding about a process. That is not, in itself, race discrimination
• An employer that rejects you because of your nationality, national origin or ethnic origin is discriminating on the ground of race, whatever it says about visas

Right to work checks sit in the same territory. An employer must check that everyone it hires has the right to work — that is a legal duty and applies to British citizens too. Checking only staff who look or sound foreign, or repeating checks on some staff and not others without a reason in the rules, is where a lawful duty turns into race discrimination. Our right to work guide sets out what an employer is actually required to do, which is the benchmark for telling the two apart.

What This Looks Like at Work

• Being paid less than colleagues doing the same work — see our minimum wage guide for the floor below which no employer may go
• Consistently getting the least favourable shifts or duties
• Remarks or "jokes" about your nationality, accent, religion or background
• Being passed over for promotion or training
• Being threatened with a report to immigration authorities as a way of keeping you quiet or compliant
• Right to work checks applied to you and not to British colleagues, or repeated on you alone

Workers on zero-hours contracts are exposed to a version of this that is hard to see, because the unfavourable treatment is an absence: shifts that stop being offered. Records of what you were offered, and when, are the only way that becomes visible. Our employment rights guide covers the baseline rights every worker has, and the legal system guide explains which courts and tribunals sit where.

How a Complaint Is Made

1. Records. Dates, times, what was said or done, who was present, and what you did about it. Keep them somewhere that is not your work account
2. Internally. Most employers publish a grievance procedure. Using it creates a written record whatever the outcome
3. Acas. GOV.UK says that before you make a claim to an employment tribunal you must tell Acas, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. Acas offers free early conciliation, and GOV.UK says the time limit is put on hold while Acas is helping to resolve the dispute
4. Employment tribunal. GOV.UK says you usually have to make a claim within 3 months of your employment ending or the problem happening; that deadline is normally counted as three months less one day. In Northern Ireland you claim through the industrial tribunals and Fair Employment Tribunal instead
5. Advice. Citizens Advice, law centres and trade unions all deal with employment problems. Legal aid rules for discrimination cases differ between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland

The process, including how to start a claim, is on the GOV.UK employment tribunal pages.

If Your Visa Depends on the Employer

One fact deserves separating from the equality law above, because confusing the two causes real harm. Bringing a complaint is an employment matter. But if your permission to stay is tied to a specific sponsor, then leaving or losing that job has immigration consequences whatever caused it — your sponsor must report the end of your employment, and your permission is normally curtailed. That is a rule about sponsorship, not a penalty for complaining.

Because those two things run on different clocks, this is a point to take to a regulated immigration adviser before you act, not after. Our legal system guide explains how to check that an adviser is regulated.

Related guides:

• Employment Rights for Visa Holders
• UK Legal System Basics
• Zero-Hours Contracts and Visas
• Domestic Violence and Visa
• Mental Health Support for Immigrants

Questions and answers