Call For New Deal On Agency Workers

As the TUC publishes new evidence of the abuse of migrant workers by employment agencies, the TUC is today (Monday) calling on Gordon Brown to break a longstanding European deadlock and agree a new deal for agency workers at a crucial EU meeting on Wednesday. So far the UK Government has been part of a blocking minority that have stopped moves by the majority of EU member states to ensure agency workers are treated the same as permanent staff doing the same job.

In advance of a meeting of the EU Social Affairs Ministers on Wednesday (5 December) the TUC has joined with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Scottish TUC and the Wales TUC to call on both the UK and Irish governments to end their opposition to the Directive.

The European Council has been discussing a new Directive on Agency Workers since 2002, which would give temps in the UK the right to equal treatment with a comparable permanent employee on issues such as pay, working time and holidays, maternity rights and protection against discrimination. The majority of EU states back these proposals. However, the British Government, in a minority with the Irish, German and Danish governments, is standing in the way of the Directive being adopted.

The TUC is concerned about the vulnerability of all agency workers in the UK with their current lack of rights in employment law. Most EU states - both old and new - have introduced individual measures giving temps equal rights in advance of the Directive, but the UK Government has refused to do this.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “There is a perfectly legitimate role for employment agencies in providing workers with short-term availability to employers with short-term needs.

‘But too many unscrupulous bosses are replacing permanent staff - with reasonable terms and conditions - with insecure agency staff. They regularly earn less than directly employed staff , are not allowed to benefit from an employer’s contributions to a pension scheme, are given less holiday, little if any access to training, and tend to get no contractual sick pay. There is a new underclass of temps who cannot get permanent work and who have no loyalty to their employers.

‘But there is a simple solution to this problem - the Directive, which most of the EU is now backing, could give UK temps new rights to equal treatment from the first day they are taken on. Day one rights would also avoid the danger that unscrupulous employers would get round the law by taking on temps for one day short of the qualifying period.

‘Agency workers have been vulnerable to real injustice for far too long. The Government should understand the strength of union feeling on this issue. There will be a political price to be paid if the UK government simply follows the business agenda - and not the social justice agenda - and they fail to grasp this new opportunity to break the EU deadlock.”