Recruitment industry calls on UK Government to stand firm at EU Council Meeting.

Recruitment industry calls on UK Government to stand firm at EU Council Meeting Survey highlights the benefits of temporary work.

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), the industry body representing the UK’s recruitment sector, today called on the Government to protect the UK’s flexible labour market ahead of a meeting of EU employment ministers, scheduled for 1 September in Brussels.

Tuesday’s meeting will discuss the proposed Agency Workers Directive, which is back on the agenda under the Dutch Presidency of the EU. At stake is the viability of temporary work in the UK.

The current draft of the Directive would entitle temporary workers to the same employment conditions and pay as permanent employees after only six weeks of an assignment. Working out comparisons with hypothetical permanent staff would create a huge amount of additional bureaucracy for both employers and agencies. This in turn would defeat the object of taking on temporary workers and would have a substantial impact on individual job seekers as well as on business.

Temporary work provides flexibility for employers but also for workers who are able to refuse an assignment or leave without providing any notice period. Equal treatment can only be justified after a substantial length of assignment, which is why the REC is calling for a time period of 12 months before such provisions can apply.

In its current draft, The Directive would constitute another example of unnecessary and potentially damaging legislation from Brussels that takes no account of the differences between labour markets. Temporary workers are often very well paid and a number of existing national regulations (such as the Employment Agency Act regulations which came into force in April 2004) already provide protection. The impact of the Directive would be substantial as it is currently estimated that there are over million temps registered to work on any given day in the UK. In a recent REC survey, only 46% of temporary workers said that they would prefer to be working as permanent staff.

Commenting ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, Gareth Osborne, Managing Director of the REC said:

Temporary workers are increasingly temping out of choice rather than necessity and the flexibility afforded by temporary work is essential for business performance in an increasingly competitive global market. The Agency Workers Directive would clearly threaten this in its current draft. We are counting on the UK Government to be decisive in advocating the kind of flexibility which is central to the UK labour market and is essential if Europe is ever to achieve the Lisbon Agenda targets on job creation and competitiveness.

For further information, please contact the REC press office on 0207 618 9106 or 07720 075 299