Who cares for the cross-border care workers?

For many people in Eastern and Southern Europe, the failure in closing this gap, coupled with declining standards of living, the loss of bargaining power and stagnant salaries in their home countries, quickly made migrating to the core for work the only option for a decent wage that can support a family. Well trained and highly skilled workers from the periphery are very much sought after, especially in industries such as agriculture, construction and healthcare in what’s commonly referred to as Western Europe.

This is how over 60,000 in-home care workers, predominantly from Eastern Europe (mainly from Romania and Slovakia) came to work in elderly care in Austria alone, as referenced in Amnesty International’s 2021 report titled “We just want some rights!”. Because they are mostly self-employed (through a commercial license), these workers lack basic labour protections generally provided by a Labour Code, making the industry one of the most exploitative, poorly remunerated, and overall dangerous transnational industries in Europe currently. 

To address these challenges, in-home care workers and activists have set up IG24 – Interessenvertretung der 24h-Betreuer_innen, a self-organized association made up of Romanian and Slovakian care workers who are working to tackle the most egregious abuses in the industry by lobbying both national (Austrian, Romanian, Slovakian) and European political decision-makers, and by providing advice to migrant in-home care workers on how to start out in the field of in-home care, best practices to avoid abuse and exploitation in the industry, and how to find support for various particular circumstances. IG24 supports migrant in-home care workers in Austria by providing counselling in multiple languages and demanding industry-wide labour rights and reforms at the national and European level.  In their own words, migrant in-home care workers are deserving of rights equal to those of employees who are protected under the Labour Codes of any European country, the right to vacation pay, the right to medical leave, the right to decent wages, fitting of their working conditions, and the right to a decent pension. 

The work of in-home care workers is essential, both for the people they care for, and for the Austrian state. But they too often work in unsafe, unfair and precarious conditions. Despite the emotionally and physically demanding work, migrant in-home care workers are often paid below minimum wage, work excessively long hours, and suffer discrimination and abuse. 

Because the vast majority of care workers are self-employed in Austria, they are responsible for finding their own clients. This makes offers from temporary foreign workers’ placement agencies hard to resist, thus making the workers reliant on their intermediary services, for which they often pay hefty commissions. This is a first gateway to abuse. IG24 has documented many cases where agencies have presented contracts to care workers solely in German, preventing care workers who lack an excellent command of German from fully understanding all clauses. What’s more, often times, care workers are forced to sign these contracts well after they have left their homes, on the road to the client, sometimes under threat to be disembarked at the next gas station if they do not.

 Aside from the problems that can arise from agreeing to terms not fully understood, the trip to the workplace itself often constitutes a real danger for care workers. Not only are they forced to accept paying for the transportation provided by the intermediary agency (or pay significant costs to do the trip on their own), but the actual trip has proven to be dangerous and even fatal for a number of care workers over the years. Because transportation of migrant workers to-and-fro the temporary workplace is contracted out by intermediary companies to transportation companies that use minibuses (8+1-seaters) almost exclusively, the typical regulatory oversight for commercial transportation (charter buses, trucks, etc.) does not apply, meaning 8+1 seat minibuses do not have to be driven by at least two commercially licensed drivers, they are not subject to tachograph inspections (device recording driving hours, aimed at preventing fatalities by reducing driver fatigue), and receipts are often not issued, making this trip often hazardous for migrant workers. 

August 23, 2022 and March 23, 2023 are only the most recent dates when Romanian care workers have lost their lives on the way to or from their patients in Austria, and a simple google search for “in home care worker + accident Austria” reveals many more victims of collisions, with the most recent one happening just a few weeks back, on August 20. Each such incident sends a shockwave through the migrant care workers’ community, and a renewed determination to continue fighting for safe transportation, as evidenced by social media posts drawing attention to these circumstances and demanding safe transportation options – for care workers, but also for the drivers often forced to work under these exploitative conditions.    

Once they arrive in Austria, in-home care workers are often presented with German-only contracts and asked to sign them right away. Aside from being pressured to sign the contracts without ample opportunity for review and clause negotiation, care workers also accuse intermediary agencies of sometimes misrepresenting the details of the case, including the severity of the cared-for persons’ health condition, the food and living arrangements for the care worker, the tasks expected to be performed, breaks and even the pay. In addition, the commissions charged by intermediaries to

connect a migrant care worker with a patient/family seeking care (although charged illegally in Romania, for instance) have to be paid well in advance of arriving at the workplace. Having travelled a long way, not being protected by the Austrian Labour Code or their own countries’ representative institutions in Austria, and often not speaking German fluently, all but forces a lot of migrant in-home care workers to accept such demeaning working conditions, for a pay of about EUR 60-80, per day, for 24-hour shifts.

Because of their self-employment status, migrant in-home care workers become solely responsible for contributions to health insurance, employment insurance and private pensions, a situation which both makes them vulnerable as workers and further diminishes their earnings. To further complicate matters, there is no shortage of situations in which intermediary agencies verbally commit to paying these various social insurance contributions on behalf of care workers, and, in reality, fail to do so, creating significant debt and fines that care workers ultimately become responsible for. 

Such is the context in which, in 2020, an initial group of Romanian in-home care workers and activists joined the March 8 protest in Vienna for the first time, with the intent to generate support and raise public awareness of the harsh working conditions, abuses and injustices in the in-home care industry in Austria, giving birth to DREPT – Justice in Care and Personal Assistance. In 2022 they joined forces with Iniciativa24, a Slovakian care workers’ association, and created IG24 – Interest Group of 24/7 Care Workers in Austria to represent the interests of migrant in-home care workers in Austria.

The services offered by IG24, as detailed in the information packages on their website, include information on topics relevant to the industry (including workshops, trainings, webinars, etc.), individual counseling in German, Romanian and Slovakian, mediation in conflict situations and intervention in crisis situations, support in communication with Austrian institutions, contractual partners or the cared-for person, organizing local community meetings to strengthen care worker networks, media relations and political lobbying, and participating in public events/direct action.

Given the transnational character of the industry, through public letters (including on social media), high-level meetings with members of Cabinet and parliament in their home countries, in Austria and at the EU-level, and through protests, migrant in-home care workers have consistently demanded that the European Union coordinate with member states to regulate the in-home care industry, to no avail so far.

In-home care workers are not the only workers leaving families behind and spending many of their working years away from their children. Seasonal workers in agriculture and food processing and migrant construction workers share many of the risks, exploitative conditions and meagre pay care workers are subject to, meaning that entire billion euros industries in the core of Europe function solely on the work provided by labour migrants next door to the east.

If we still stand for the original European Union values of human dignity, equality and rule of law, it is high time for the EU to replace the self-employment regime with employment contracts, industry-wide and EU-wide, in order to improve salaries, diminish exploitation of workers, and expand and equalize social protections such as pensions, health and unemployment insurance across member states. In addition, the EU must regulate the intermediary worker placement agencies to define a universal scope for what they can do – spell out what services they can/must provide, limit what they can charge commissions for, mandate that all contracts be bilingual and negotiated before the worker leaves the home country, define how agencies can be held accountable in the context of transnational work mobility, and regulate the transportation sector to establish rules for 8+1 seat minibuses, so that not another migrant life is lost on the way to work or on the way home. Lastly, The EU must enforce protections for all migrant workers – no matter the industry, work status or country of origin – starting with the implementation of the European-wide minimum wage and harmonizing collective bargaining rules and opportunities across the entire European market. Labour protection is an essential right, and as such, it must be ensured structurally, transnationally and consistently within the European labor market.

Anda Iorga works as a public policy expert by day, and serves the labour movement, as allowed.

DREPT  – Justice in Care and Personal Assistance is a self-organized group of Romanian migrant in-home care workers in Austria, established as a not-for-profit organization in 2020. Their main services include education about the rights and activities of career, but also individual counseling, support and crisis intervention, and political lobbying.