The deal, agreed between the Government, the Trades Union
Congress (TUC) and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI),
gives agency workers the right to the same treatment as permanent
staff after 12 weeks of working for a company.
Though the term 'equal treatment' remains relatively undefined
it will not include pension rights.
"Equal treatment will be defined to mean at least the basic
working and employment conditions that would apply to the workers
concerned if they had been recruited directly by that undertaking
to occupy the same job," said a Government statement.
The Government said that it would "consult the social partners"
about how to resolve disputes about what exactly equal treatment
will mean.
But employment law expert Michael Ryley, a partner with Pinsent
Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, said that the new
agreement could act against the interests of agency workers.
"The risk is here that the agency market is going to be damaged
by this because the employer will have to pay the agency worker at
a higher rate and pay the commission to the agency," he said. "It
may be that it all gets too expensive and damages the market by
creating an unwelcome degree of inflexibility."
The European Commission is considering creating an EU Directive
more strictly regulating the use of agency workers to stamp out
employers' use of agencies to avoid giving workers full employee
benefits.
The UK Government has said that it wants to retain the labour
market flexibility that agencies bring, and it said that it hoped
that the current agreement preserves that.
"[The] agreement achieves our twin objectives of flexibility for
British employers and fairness for workers," said business
secretary John Hutton. "It will give people a fair deal at work
without putting their jobs at risk or cutting off a valuable route
into employment."
Ryley, though, said that he feared that the deal would restrict
the flexibility that the Government wants to protect.
"The concern about this is that by and large the legislation
barks slightly up the wrong tree because agency workers mean
different things in different countries in the EU," said Ryley. "In
this country agency workers have never really been seen to be a
problem, they have been a necessary part of the flexibility of a
labour market, and have not generally been used as a way of
exploiting people – most people who are agency workers are that for
a reason."
A study by the universities of Bradford, Leeds and Kent found
that there are 250,000 agency workers in the UK, at 1% of the
workforce a smaller number than had previously been estimated. They
earn on average 32% less than permanently employed people, while
just one in five agency workers is in a managerial or professional
occupation.
Ryley said that the new deal will not be warmly welcomed by
employers which use agencies.
"It's going to be very irritating for employers because it
reduces their freedom of choice, their flexibility," said Ryley.
"One wonders if the benefits for workers is cosmetic. Parity of
remuneration has a big black hole in it if it doesn't include
pensions, and agency workers aren't calling for it. It is not in
their interests if has a negative impact on the market for agency
work."
