Agency workers' rights one step closer
08/10/2009
During a recent speech at a TUC conference, Gordon Brown made a pledge to bring forward the implementation of rights for temporary agency workers and he hopes that the legislation will be on the statute books in the "coming few months."
The Agency Workers' Directive is an EU initiative which states that member states must put laws in place to implement it by December 2011. Businesses and recruiters hoped for implementation as close to the deadline as possible so Mr Brown’s recent speech is unlikely to be welcomed with open arms.
The legislation is designed to provide for the equal treatment of agency workers and provide some comparable rights to permanent staff. The legislation will not make them permanent employees or provide them with the right of unfair dismissal but is likely to provide them with the right to equal pay and conditions when compared with an equivalent permanent worker once they reach 12 week’s work.
The government has yet to detail the exact terms of the proposed legislation, such as which employees are comparable, does equality include overtime and bonus for example or just basic terms and conditions and will the legislation then create further inequality between agency workers and employed temporary staff.
We recommend that businesses should review their workforce if they employ agency workers, investigate who they could be compared with, check for potential inequalities and contact us with any questions or to discuss alternatives.
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