TWELVE Filipino nurses brought to Scotland under a Scottish executive drive to attract migrant workers are suing the NHS for racial discrimination.

The nurses are seeking damages worth hundreds of thousands of pounds from NHS Greater Glasgow Health Board because, they claim, they were being charged three times more for their staff accommodation than Scots workers.

They also claim to have been charged excessive interest on loans made by the NHS to help with their resettlement costs which left them with just £8 a day to live on.

Unison, which is representing the workers, has claimed that the rent payments were exploitative and a breach of their human rights.

The nurses, some of whom are still working at the Southern General hospital and the Victoria Infirmary, claim they were told they would earn £13,000 a year. Some even spoke of their joy at receiving such high wages.

Of their £1,100 monthly wage before tax, £600 was removed in deductions, including loan repayments of £380 to the trust and £274 in rent.

In some cases, up to four were flat-sharing and forced to pay around £1,100 a month even though the normal rent was about £400. “The principle here is that people were forced to pay their rent direct from their wages,” said a union source.

“Would they have done that with any other staff? The answer is no and that’s the basic legal position. If you were an employee of that trust and you owed them money, then without a court order would they enforce a deduction from wages? I’m sure some people thought they were doing the right thing but it was wrong.”

The arrival of the Filipino nurses was the first in an anticipated wave of new recruits from abroad. There are concerns that their treatment will deter many others from coming to Scotland.

Executive targets, set in 2002, to attract 12,000 new nurses by 2007 are already in doubt. Last year, just 894 were hired according to the Royal College of Nursing Scotland (RCN).

“The NHS is generally very good when it comes to recruiting from overseas but we have come across cases where foreign nurses have been exploited like this. We need to be careful that recruiting is done ethically and sensibly,” said Robert Ainslie, a spokesman for RCN Scotland.

John Scott, a spokesman for the Scottish Human Rights Centre, said: “This is not something that would have happened to Scottish nurses. It sounds like the trust was exploiting a vulnerable group of workers.

“It’s indefensible and I can’t think how they will fend this off. Legally it sounds as if the nurses have a case and the trust were just doing the wrong thing.”

Matt McLaughlin, a Unison spokesman, said: “We are pursuing a case of race discrimination on behalf of some of the nurses that came from the Philippines and worked in Glasgow. We believe we have a very strong case and it’s not the first time we’ve tackled equality issues with this trust.”

A spokeswoman for NHS Greater Glasgow, said: “The case is being progressed through our legal advisers.”

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