"Romanians and other European migrants, victims of “modern slavery” practices in the UK construction industry", 11 April 2018

A survey by Focus on Labour Exploitation (FLEX) found that at least a third of London’s approximately 100,000 European migrant construction workers, from countries including Romania and Poland, have worked for no pay and experienced verbal and physical abuse, Reuters reports.

The organisation found that tens of thousands of European migrants work in dangerous conditions without pay and contracts and suffer verbal and physical abuse, and that such practices were most likely to be found in the construction sector...

FLEX is calling for “proactive labour inspection across the construction industry so that workers can report abuse early before modern slavery takes root,” adding that many workers are too scared or don’t know how to make complaints.

According to FLEX, Britain has only 0.4 labour inspectors per 10,000 workers, half of the number in Poland and a third of those in Norway.