Business organisations against temporary worker rights

Business leaders have called on the Prime Minister to resist attempts by the European Union to impose new rights for temporary and agency workers on employers.

The issue is to be discussed at a key meeting of employment ministers in Brussels on Wednesday 5 December,  where plans by the Portuguese presidency of the EU for a temporary and agency workers directive are being negotiated.

A previous draft directive proposed that temporary workers should be given the same pay and benefits as full-time staff, including pensions, sick pay and holiday entitlements, after six weeks.

British employers have argued against this, saying that that temporary and agency workers should be in the same job for at least six months before they achieve the same rights as full-time colleagues.

Employers’ organisations, representing almost 500,000 small and medium-sized businesses, warned the prime minister in a letter that the EU proposals “would decrease the flexibility of the UK labour market as well as creating obstacles to getting people back into work”.Commenting on the EU Agency Workers' Directive, David Frost, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said:

"A key element of the UK's success in job creation has been a flexible labour market. Legislation that reduces flexibility will only serve to harm the economy.

"The UK agency sector is well established with one third of all agency workers in Europe employed here. As a result, current proposals in the Agency Workers' Directive will disproportionately affect the UK, particularly plans to make temporary workers' eligible for equal pay six weeks into an assignment.

"Our position is that the derogation from the directive on pay should be extended to 12 months. This is in line with other employment rights like unfair dismissal and ensures that an ongoing relationship between the agency worker and the end-user has been established.

"We urge the government to stand firm during the upcoming negotiations and not to allow the competitiveness of British business to be adversely affected."

Other signatories to the letter include the Institute of Directors, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Professional Contractors Group.

John Hutton, Business and Enterprise Secretary, told the TUC annual conference in September that ministers would not give in to demands on temporary workers’ rights if it damaged Britain’s flexible labour market.The TUC joined with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Scottish TUC and the Wales TUC to call on both UK and Irish governments to end their opposition to the directive.TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said the directive "could give UK temps new rights to equal treatment from the first day they are taken on . Agency workers have been vulnerable to real injustice for far too long."

"The Government should understand the strength of union feeling on this issue. There will be a political price to be paid if the UK government simply follows the business agenda – and not the social justice agenda – and they fail to grasp this new opportunity to break the EU deadlock."