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We have received news that the EU Agency Workers Directive has been agreed by all member states of the European Employment Council so I thought I'd be topical and try to give you an overview of what it could mean to the temporary and contract worker market and more importantly you individually.

You may remember that Susan spoke about the directive a while ago (and I will be consulting with Susan a lot over this, she clearly being the brains of this operation), but now we know it's being passed into law we can go into a little more detail.

Here's the short version of what the Agency Workers Directive aims to do. It's being introduced to give temporary workers the same rights as permanent employees of the hiring business. This is an EU driven directive whole heartedly supported by the Unions but less enthusiastically received by business. Why? Well, in Europe temporary working is relatively undeveloped (except perhaps in France). Whereas, in the UK temporary working has been around for over 50 years and is well established and an integral part of the UK economy.

To give you some perspective, the UK on it's own represents over 40% of the whole European temporary worker market, so it's inevitable, that the introduction of this Directive is going to have a greater effect on the UK than any other country.

Back in May, the Government, CBI (Confederation of British Industry representing business) and TUC (Trades Union Congress representing the unions) came to an agreement that the UK would implement the Directive in a modified form. Temporary workers would be entitled to equal rights with their permanent colleagues but only after 12 weeks of the assignment. In the rest of the EU it comes into effect as soon as a worker begins work.

The changes that it hopes to bring into effect are equal pay, vocational training, maternity pay, working time, and prevention of discrimination to name but a few. It does not cover pensions, sick pay and health, safety and hygiene.

Whilst the spirit of the regulations are positive the implications to the temporary worker market as a whole are huge. Agencies will have to become more transparent with their pricing and margins, end clients will have to disclose what benefits permanent employees enjoy (from the office canteen to childcare and training), and due to the directive taking effect after 12 weeks we can expect 10 or 11 week contracts becoming much more common. This could have a detrimental effect on those with long term temporary contracts as they essentially become more expensive to the end client.

There is bound to be a flurry of interpretation and comment over the months as the Directive is implemented in April 2009, and until we get closer to that date we're stuck with speculation and opinion. For the time being here are some of the questions we feel need answering:

Will this legislation apply to limited company contractors and freelancers as well as agency workers?

Will the equal pay legislation be applied to workers whose wage is currently above that of the permanent employees?

Who is going to foot the bill for the increase in benefits paid out to agency workers?

Will this have an effect on the working time directive?

Who's responsibility is it to ensure that these regulations are being met?

If you have any comments on this it would be great to hear them, and you can get in touch by clicking Hugo below. I should mention that the delightful Lynne will be blogging for you again this Friday which I am sure will be a welcome change. Have a great rest of your week.

Hugo
29/10/2008