Union campaigns for agency workers' rights

(August 2016) The agency set up by the UK government to regulate employment agencies and agency work has seen its budget cut by over 50% since 2010. An investigation by the Labour Party found that staff at the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate (EAS) had been cut by 70% and that the body had failed to secure a single prosecution over the past year. Although complaints rose by a fifth between 2011 and 2016, the number of inspections carried out by the EAS fell by more than half. Read more at the Guardian newspaper.

The UK government has finally agreed to a deal on agency workers that should enable progress to be made on the long-delayed temporary agency workers directive. In the agreement with the TUC trade union confederation and CBI employers' organisation the UK government has conceded that after 12 weeks on the same contract, agency workers should be able to claim equal treatment (in terms of pay and some other conditions) with the permanent members of staff they work alongside. Movement on this directive is closely linked to progress on revision of the working time directive and both will be

Ver.di has highlighted the growing numbers of agency workers across parts of the public sector including health, energy and waste. The union points out that many of these workers are not paid the same as the permanent workers they work alongside, often losing out in terms of allowances and additional payments. They are also the first to go when employers want job cuts to reduce costs. Ver.di is running a campaign to secure equal treatment for agency workers, noting that this is no longer a peripheral problem. [Read more at > ver.di (DE)->https://ver-und-entsorgung.verdi.de/themen/leiharbeit