CWU Agency Campaign – Securing a fair deal for agency workers

14 February 2014

By Billy Hayes, General Secretary CWU

A CWU delegation recently met with MEPS and European Commission officials in Brussels to highlight the widespread avoidance of fair treatment for agency workers in the UK, which we argue is incompatible with the EU Temporary Agency Workers Directive (TAWD).

The CWU represents over three thousand agency workers, most of whom are paid less than permanent employees doing the same job. The TAWD was supposed to resolve this injustice, but the UK’s flawed implementation of the Directive has allowed the abuse of the ‘Swedish derogation’, which employers are using to continue to avoid equal treatment on pay.

The CWU has been campaigning for equal treatment rights for agency workers for many years. In May 2008, I sat around a table with leaders from the TUC, the CBI and the UK Government and we reached a landmark deal which saw the Government remove its six year block on an EU Directive for temporary agency workers.

The unions called for equal rights from day one, but the CBI wanted agency workers to wait a full year to qualify. In the end we compromised on a 12 week qualifying period.

The ‘Swedish derogation’, which exempts agencies from offering the same rate of pay providing the worker has a permanent contract of employment and is paid between assignments, was also included in the deal. However, this was only the subject of consultation with the unions rather than our agreement.

In order to guard against the misuse of the Swedish derogation and the 12 week qualifying period, we agreed on robust anti-avoidance measures to prevent employers from using these aspects of the regulations to circumvent the Directive’s core objective of equal treatment.

When the UK Agency Workers Regulations came into force in 2011, transposing the EU Directive into UK law, they should have heralded a new era of fair treatment and equal pay for agency workers. But for most, including the CWU’s 3,000 agency members employed by Manpower on the BT Contract, the opposite has happened.

Over 90% of our members have been placed on ‘pay between assignment’ (PBA) contracts, which Manpower is using to avoid paying their workers the same as BT’s permanent employees doing the same job.

The CWU has taken the issue up with both BT and Manpower, but BT claim it is not their responsibility and Manpower claim they are simply paying market rates.

Faced with this response, the CWU’s main focus is to secure better legal protection for agency workers. Over the last 18 months the CWU has stepped up our agency campaign to close the loopholes in the UK Agency Regulations, which we argue do not comply with the core aims of the EU Directive or the anti-avoidance measures we were so careful to put in place in 2008.

Agency workers employed on the Swedish derogation contract regularly experience pay discrimination, with some paid up to £135 a week less than permanent staff despite doing the same job.

In Sweden, where these contracts originate, workers still receive equal pay once in post and 90 per cent of normal pay between assignments. But in the UK workers have no equal pay rights and when in between assignments they receive half pay or the minimum wage. Many of our agency members are on a one hour contract, meaning they can be paid as little as one hour per week between assignments.

This amounts to systematic abuse of the Swedish derogation principle, and along with the TUC, we are calling for Swedish derogation contracts to be banned.

On 20th January this year, a CWU delegation led by national officer Sally Bridge lobbied officials from the European Commission in Brussels, helping to reinforce a recent formal complaint from the TUC on this issue. The TUC’s complaint charges the UK Government with failing to properly implement the TAWD and questions the legality of the Government’s interpretation of the Directive.

The Brussels trip was a great success and the delegation did a tremendous job of raising awareness at a European level of what our agency members are going through in the UK.

CWU reps handed in a petition to the European Commission containing more than 3,000 signatories from those working at the call centres where agency workers are experiencing unequal treatment.

The entire group of Labour MEP’s as well as many of their colleagues on the European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee agreed with the CWU’s position that the spirit of the TAWD has been deliberately undermined in the UK.

A number of influential MEPs in Europe, including Glenis Willmot, Richard Howitt, Alejandro Cercas and Ole Christensen have agreed to lodge questions with the Commission with a view to forcing a Parliamentary debate on the issue.

The CWU is also campaigning closer to home with a meeting planned with MPs in Westminster in the coming weeks. We think agency rights will be a key issue in the run up to the next general election, and we’ll be speaking to MPs in areas like Newcastle and Warrington where many of our agency members work.

We’ll keep on campaigning for as long as it takes to end the exploitation of agency workers in the UK.