New rights for agency workers
May 30, 2008
The ongoing debate and battle over legislation relating to agency worker rights came to a head last week when a deal was struck between the TUC, CBI and the Government that entitles UK agency workers to employment rights equal to their equivalent permanent workers (in terms of salary) after 12 weeks working with the same firm. This issue has been going on for ages – I last wrote about it back in February, and whilst Gordon Brown originally backed the CBI view that adopting the EU Directive on agency worker rights would damage the flexible labour market that the UK enjoys, he changed this opinion last week. This is seen as a bit of a compromise, as the EU wanted the qualifying period to be shorter, however it seems that the PM’s hand was forced somewhat as the hope is that by agreeing to this legislation, the UK will be able to opt out of the working time directive. This law limits the legal working week to 48 hours, and UK workers who are currently able to opt out and work overtime hours over and above this would potentially lose a large proportion of their income if a limit was imposed. The news has been received well by the TUC, however other bodies such as the CBI and the CIPD have criticized the adoption of the legislation as they feel it will be very problematic for businesses to handle.
I don’t use many temporary workers, and if I do we would pay them a comparable rate of pay to what they would receive if they were permanent anyway, so this isn’t too much of an issue for me personally, but having worked in the past for a company that relied heavily on temporary staff I can imagine the difficulty this legislation is going to pose for some organisations. It will require a big pay evaluation exercise in industries where many temporary workers are employed, to ensure than no members of staff receive lower pay rates. The alternative, to employ people in contracts that are less than 12 weeks long, is completely impractical and the number of available temps that have not already had their 12 weeks exhausted will run out pretty quickly. Where I used to work there was a ‘bank’ staff system and we had lots of long term temporary workers that came through an agency but worked additional shifts on a regular ad hoc basis.
Some companies have already said that they may respond to the legislation by employing fewer agency workers and creating a flexible workforce by developing more flexible working arrangements for their permanent staff. If this is a widespread occurrence, there will be fewer temporary assignments available and potentially the only ones on offer will be less than three months long. I’m finding it difficult to see how this will improve life at work for the 1.4 million agency workers we currently have in the UK.
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