Announcement on Agency Workers Regulations - May 08
This week, the Prime Minister announced that the Government plans to bring forward legislation that will ensure new rules for fair treatment for agency workers. For years, the UK had resisted attempts in Europe to introduce a Directive that would give agency workers rights to the same terms and conditions as permanent employees in areas such as pay and holidays.
The Government, however, has come under mounting pressure from trade unions and politicians to legislate in favour of agency workers. On Tuesday 20 May the Government announced that new legislation will entitle agency workers to equal treatment after 12 weeks in a given job.
Full details have yet to be released however any legislation that is enacted in order to bring into effect the Government’s proposals is expected to include at least the basic working and employment protections that would have been applicable had the workers been recruited directly (not including sick pay and pensions). These details, when they arrive, will spell out the potential impact of the proposals not only for the agency workers themselves but for those who engage them.
The next step is for the Government to carry out a consultation exercise with the UK’s European partners. The Directive which proposed equality of rights for agency workers was published in 2002. Over the years the Directive has not really been progressed and the Government now hopes that EU agreement will be reached in time for the legislation to be introduced in the next Parliamentary session.
There are at present a number of fundamental questions to be answered in relation to the Government’s proposals. For example it is not known whether the new rights will only trigger once a worker has spent 12 weeks or more with an end user or whether, having accrued that service, protection will be retrospective. The introduction of a 12 week qualifying period does however provide employers with a degree of flexibility, leaving genuinely short-term hire without an entitlement to equal treatment. It is also worth bearing in mind that in many cases agency workers are compensated more generously than their permanent comparators. The question remains whether this inequality could give rise to wider equitable concerns amongst employers.
A further bulletin will be published once the details of the Government proposals are made clear.
For more information on this subject, please contact Simon Collingridge on 01242 246405 or simon.collingridge@rickerbys.com.
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