Up the (agency) workers!

(By Anthony Miller – Sunday, 1 March 2009 7:00pm). I just get so aggravated reading the stream of articles such as this one in the Weekend FT about trade union pressure on the Government to implement the European Union Directive on agency workers. Given the UK IT industry’s high reliance on contractors, this is something that deserves close scrutiny. The Directive (see here) aims to ‘protect’ agency workers “while taking into account the need to establish a suitable framework for the use of temporary agency work with a view to contributing effectively to the creation of jobs and to the development of flexible forms of working.” Yeah, but, no but!!

In May last year, the CBI and TUC issued an agreement (see here) agreeing to give agency workers ‘equal treatment’ to employees after 12 weeks in a given job – though precisely how ‘equality’ was to be determined was not explained. There will be a ‘detailed consultation’ before these provisions come into effect. According to the FT article, and to no one’s surprise, employers are urging the Government to delay implementation until the end of time itself (or 2011, whichever comes first). There was a wonderful reference in the article attributed to the Unions, warning that temporary staff are often the “cannon fodder” who are the first to be made redundant in a downturn. Well, yeah, that’s why more ‘real’ employees get to keep their jobs.

Maybe I totally miss the point about being a temp. I thought it was all about being able to choose when to work and for how long, and (typically) being able to charge more per hour than an equivalent employee on the very basis of not getting employee benefits and of taking the risk not always being able to find work.

Pushing more legislation on companies to treat agency workers as employees defeats the whole purpose of flexible working.

And here’s one for the conspiracy theorists. Maybe it’s all part of a grand EU plot to render the UK as hopelessly bogged down in the same highly restrictive employment practices that are prevalent in many continental European markets. I guess that’s what they call levelling the playing field!