Latest Information

Gordon Brown last week announced that he will bring together the Trades Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry to form a commission of inquiry to assess the rights of Temporary and Agency workers in the UK.  The commission will be chaired by Sir George Bain, the former chairman of the Low Pay Commission.

 This comes only two weeks after agency workers’ rights were dealt a blow in the form of a judgement in the Court of Appeal, which confirmed a prior ruling that agency workers cannot claim an employment relationship between worker and labour user, regardless of the amount of time they may have worked in a particular role. 

Gordon Brown’s support of a new Temporary and Agency Workers’ Commission seeks to bring together two parties (the TUC and CBI) that have historically had different views on the provision of rights to temporary and agency workers in the UK.  Both parties have taken radically different stances towards the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill which is due to have its second reading in Parliament later this month.   The Bill, which is sponsored by Andrew Miller MP, seeks to extend the rights of agency workers towards equality with those of permanent employees.  

This appears to be a significant turn around by the Labour government that had blocked the Temporary Agency Work Directive which has been stalled in the EU Parliament since 2002, largely due to the actions of Britain and Ireland. The Directive’s future now looks much rosier thanks to the fact that France takes over the presidency of the EU later this year.  

The TUC has championed the opinion that the labour force should be de-casualised and that all workers should have equal employment rights. The CBI has argued that the blocking of the Directive in the EU was a cause for celebration and that millions of jobs in the UK would have been lost if the Directive had been ‘bullied through Brussels’.  

The step by Brown is said to represent a move away from the ‘Blairite’ policies of the Labour party, and a return to their core values, which include equal treatment. The commission is set to establish a process to identify comparable full time workers and therefore determine what equal pay and conditions would look like for agency workers, and how this might work under any future EU directives. 

However, some MPs and unionists have condemned the move, arguing that it is yet another stalling tactic on the part of the government. They argue that the commission will appear to support the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill, but will actually prevent it becoming law, and will waste time on assessing the current rights of such workers, which have long been known to be inadequate and open to exploitation. Today’s Guardian reports that union leaders fear that the formation of the commission is being pushed forward in order to prevent a likely backbench rebellion on the Bill.  

Impactt has promoted the rights of all workers, including agency and temporary workers, through our work conducting assessments and training.  Much of our work on this issue has focused on mediating towards the provision of permanent jobs for long term agency workers, and ensuring that the reliance on agency labour is kept to a minimum, covering seasonal peaks in production, holidays and sick absences. This practice allows long term agency workers to move into permanent positions with full employment rights, and allows companies to utilise a relatively casual workforce whilst increasing their permanent capacity.   

By adopting a proactive approach to the use of agency labour, workplaces can ensure that they minimise the likelihood of exposure to media campaigns and negative coverage as a result of differential treatment of staff on their site.  Once the commission is established, Impactt encourages all interested parties to submit responses in order to ensure a fully effective process.  We also keenly await reports on the upcoming second reading of the Bill on Friday and believe that the increased attention that the two Parliamentary measures, and the EU Directive, are bringing to the debate will only reinforce the message to employers; and thereby benefit a section of the labour force that has been largely invisible for some time.