Agency workers bill would bypass vulnerable staff and rish jobs instead - CBI

Vulnerable workers would not benefit from complex new rules before Parliament on temporary agency work, but 250,000 jobs would be put at risk and the UK would lose a vital competitive edge, the CBI warned today.

Misleading assertions that all agency workers are vulnerable ignore the strong protection that temps already have, and the fact that proper enforcement is the real challenge facing Government.

The CBI's comments come ahead of the second reading of Andrew Miller's Private Members Bill on temporary agency workers on February 22nd, which proposes a complex regulatory regime that would deter businesses from using temporary staff.

The Bill would also fail to protect the truly vulnerable because rogue employers would continue to ignore existing regulations. Meanwhile, the vast majority of good employers would be hit with extra costs and a confusing system of matching pay to permanent staff.

In the 2007 CBI/Pertemps annual employment trends survey of over 500 firms, which between them employ some 1.1 million staff, 58 per cent of employers said that such a law would lead to a 'significant' cut in the use of temporary workers, suggesting that - across the whole labour market - 250,000 placements could be lost.

John Cridland, CBI Deputy Director-General, said: Very few temporary workers qualify as vulnerable and even fewer are exploited. Around half choose temporary work over a permanent job, and many are well paid. All are protected by rights covering working time, paid holiday, minimum wage, discrimination and health and safety.

Any firms that do mistreat their temporary staff are breaking existing rules and deserve to be hauled over the coals. This type of abuse demands more effective enforcement, not a raft of new laws.

The CBI believes that a temp's employment relationship is with their agency, not the user, while the link between user and agency is a commercial arrangement - a contract of service. Comparisons across this divide are inappropriate for shorter placements. Equal pay between temporary workers and permanent staff cannot always be justified, and differentials that remain reflect gaps in skills and experience. In many cases, particularly IT and engineering, temps earn considerably more than their permanent counterparts.

Temps come in a for a short period to do a specific job, they do not offer the kind of ongoing commitment that permanent staff and their employers share. Once a user company has had a temp for a period of time, comparisons become more appropriate. As a solution to protecting so-called permatemps, the CBI has suggested a qualifying period of 12 months, which is in line with other time-limited employment rights.

Under the proposals of the Bill, temporary workers would receive equal treatment on pay from day one, but this would create regulatory confusion over how to compare temporary and permanent workers, and also muddle the relationship between the temp's employer - his or her agency - and the business user.

Rather than focussing on catching rogue employers, the Bill sets up a series of complex legalistic hoops for user companies to jump through, which will only lead to them cutting demand for agency staff. Only 14% of those roles would be replaced with new, permanent staff, with a majority of firms relying on increased overtime, according to the most recent REC/BMG 360 tracking survey of the views of temps, agencies and employers.

Mark Cahill, Managing Director of Manpower UK, said: Temporary work is a vital source of both employment opportunities and commercial flexibility in the UK.

Manpower alone places 30,000 employees on assignment across four thousand customers in the UK every week. These assignments cover a variety of business needs including new product lines or services, seasonal fluctuations, staff absence and paternity and maternity leave.

All Manpower employees have a contract of employment and therefore are entitled to the same time-based rights as any other employee, for example unfair dismissal and redundancy pay.

The majority of our employees want the flexibility of temporary work. Many are returning to the workplace following a period of absence or long-term unemployment, want a career change or to benefit from the training and variation temporary work can provide. We believe the Miller Bill would damage their ability to make these choices and reduce job opportunities.