We must treat all workers more fairly

May 27 2008 by Kevin Rowan for The Journal

A COUPLE of weeks ago the TUC’s Commission on Vulnerable Employment highlighted that around 100,000 workers in the North East were in “vulnerable employment”, many of these were in temporary contracts or employed through an agency.

For some time trade unions and the TUC have been calling for these workers to be treated fairly.

Promises to follow through on EU ambitions to ensure “fair treatment” included temporary and agency workers have been stalled for years, blocked by a UK government anxious about a supposed negative impact on business.

Earlier this month this position changed; a combination of pressure from the EU institutions at one end, the Commission and the Parliament, both have which have been consistent in their aspirations to ensure fairer treatment for workers, and trade unions at the other. The Government increasingly found itself defending a minority view that it was necessary to treat workers badly in order for businesses to be successful.

Now the Government, the CBI and the TUC have an agreed position on a point in which agency workers can expect to be treated more equally at work, 12 weeks – the block to a Europe-wide Directive withdrawn.

Of course, it is only more equal treatment, not absolute. Agency workers will still be much more vulnerable than colleagues who enjoy more permanent contracts and we will certainly have to keep a close eye on the polarisation of skills as agency workers fall behind in training, making it ever more unlikely that they will be able to progress into more stable employment.

The 12-week limit to unfair treatment in pay and other conditions is, however, significant progress from where business voices were a short while ago.

Most decent employers do recognise the unfairness in treating agency workers unfairly for long periods of a contract placement, but often barriers such as charging a “finder’s fee” have stopped employers from offering permanent places even if they’ve wanted to. It would be a mistake to identify employer organisations as being enthusiastic about these changes.

The best they have said is that it is “the least worst option”, others suggesting it is impossible to balance flexibility and fair pay for agency workers. This is, of course, completely bogus, the main advantage that employers identify for using agency staff is the fact that they can fill in for “short term” peaks in demand – nothing so far proposed will harm that option at all. We will need to ensure this antipathy toward fair treatment does not manifest in creative measures to avoid applying the law as it is intended – strong enforcement will be essential.

It is very good news for an awful lot of agency workers who find themselves working – sometimes for years – on lower wages and poorer conditions than colleagues next to them doing exactly the same job. Tackling this kind of overt unfairness is exactly what a Labour government should be doing.