TUC calls for employment rights for all agency workers

Trade union body, the TUC has called on the Government to ensure that all agency workers receive the same rights on pay, holiday and working time as directly employed staff.

The TUC has been a long-standing campaigner for the EU's Temporary Agency Workers' Directive, which must now be implemented by the UK Government. However, the Directive has caused concern in the freelancing community who fear that freelancers could be caught up in its provisions, giving them employment rights which could make them less attractive to potential clients.

In its submission to the consultation on the measure, the TUC wanted the Government to ensure new rules give agency workers real protection from exploitation and genuine equal treatment on pay, holiday and hours.

A survey commissioned by the TUC interviewed over 2,700 people who are temps (sic) or who have done agency work in the past year. It revealed many temps face discrimination at work. One in three (33 per cent) respondents said that directly employed staff were paid more than 'temps' for doing the same work, and nearly half (46 per cent) said they received less holiday entitlement.

Three in four (75 per cent) respondents to the poll said 'temps' were entitled to less redundancy pay than directly employed staff, and more than two in three (70 per cent) said that agency workers were entitled to less maternity pay than directly employed colleagues.

The TUC submission called on the Government to introduce the new regulations as quickly as possible and to ensure they:

• apply to all agency workers;
  
• deliver genuine equal treatment for temps on pay, holiday and working time;
  
• prevent employers from avoiding the regulations, for example by hiring temps on a series of short-term contracts or giving them different assignments in the same workplace;
  
• provide clear and precise rules about how the rights should be applied.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: "While agency working has a legitimate role to play within the economy, TUC research has exposed widespread mistreatment of agency workers across the UK.

"Agency workers have told the TUC they regularly find themselves with less basic pay, holiday pay and entitlement, redundancy pay, maternity pay, and access to training and childcare than directly employed staff doing the same job.

"The Government must introduce the new regulations in the Directive quickly to ensure that temps are protected and that the exploitation of agency workers by rogue agencies ends as soon as possible.

"The new laws must provide real protection and any loopholes which would allow unscrupulous employers to avoid the law and continue to mistreat agency workers must be closed."

However, the TUC's approach met with concern from agency group, the Association of Recruitment Consultancies (ARC) who said that the TUC's survey contradicts their own argument.

Adrian Marlowe chairman of ARC said: "Now is not the time to be introducing extended rights for agency workers. Employers across the country are struggling to cope with the recession and introducing an additional burden on business now is unnecessary, costly and will simply extend the misery for all.

"The TUC's own survey into how agency workers are treated, blows their arguments for fast tracking of the Agency Workers' Directive, out of the water. It shows that the majority are already getting fair treatment.

"Sixty-seven per cent of the respondents are paid the same or more than employed staff and 54 per cent receive the same or more holiday than permanent employees – that doesn't sound like an exploited workforce to me. And I am not alone in that view