Win: Indentured labour is unlawful, rules Court of Appeal

We’re thrilled to announce that an ugly employment practice akin to indentured labour should now end, following a landmark judgment from the Court of Appeal. 

Poor quality employers – like Geeks Limited – have been preying on graduates desperate to find work. It offers them a job on little more than the minimum wage but saddles them with a “training” loan which they can pay off by remaining with their employer for 18 months after the “training” finishes. If they leave in the meantime they must repay some or all of the loan. 

This “training” consisted of being “mentored” or having general “study and practice activities” and, in reality, is little more than what every employer does for every new graduate. And, we believe, it is simply a ruse to hang a debt running into many thousands of pounds around graduates’ necks, forcing them to continue to work for Geeks at low salaries.

As the Court of Appeal put it, Geeks’ position was that “an employer can require a new junior employee to repay a sum broadly equivalent to his total salary in the first six-month period on the grounds that he has benefited from being ‘trained’ by the employer”.

This looked very much like indentured labour to us – a disgraceful exploitation of graduate vulnerability. So we underwrote the costs risk of bringing the challenge – a risk that grew as we lost at first instance and then again on appeal before succeeding in the Court of Appeal.

The case is Good Law Project’s longest running campaign. We started campaigning on the issue in 2018 taking on listed companies Capita and FDM Group which abandoned the practice in 2018 and 2022 respectively. But Geeks Limited – and others – have persisted.

We are grateful to our legal team of Adam Solomon KC leading John Platts-Mills and Aman Thakur of Leigh Day.

We believe there is a powerful case for those who repaid those “loans” to Geeks Limited – or FDM, Capita, Sparta Global and others – to recover the sums they paid. 

If that’s you please do get in touch.