Temporary Workers Directive to be scrapped

Temporary workers are beginning to enjoy some of the rights of their permanent counterparts albeit they have had to fight for those rights. Brook Street, Cable and Wireless and RNLI cases have all had a significant impact in this area.

I believe the UK needs to retain the flexible workforce it has in temporary employees and temporary workers, however legislation could do an awful lot to clarify individuals rights and entitlements with the impact of removing much of the employment and contract litigation arising from this.

Thanks for pointing that out Stephen. The article we wrote was about temporary workers not temporary employees, a distinction we didn't make clear enough. There is an important difference between the two because temporary workers are not technically employed with the firm they work for - normally because they are on the books of an employment agency and are placed with clients of the agency to carry out specific assignments. Like you said there's nothing to stop a temporary employee acquiring most of the rights permanent employees enjoy, however most agency temporary workers are treated as not employed by anyone and this restricts the range of employment rights they can rely on.

Your article is incorrect in so far as temporary workers placed through employment businesses and paid under PAYE should have access to SSP, SMP and holiday pay.

There are no doubt a great many temporary workers that are poorly treated and suffer at the hands of unethical employment businesses and employers. And it is certainly true that the majority of temporary workers do not enjoy the benefits of their permanent counterparts.

However we need to decide whether we want to consolidate our permanent and flexible workforces into a single workforce. If we do, we have to understand the implications for the uk industry and economy, which I'm not convinced we (or the TUC) fully understand. If we do want to retain our flexible workforce the EU directive was not right for UK business and the UK government and it's unions should be actively seeking ways of protecting those that are exploited, clarifying their status in law and standardising the benefits (stakeholder pensions for instance) they should have access to, not handcuffing those that do seek to treat their temporary workers fairly.