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The employment ministers of Europe are due to meet on December 5th to discuss the proposed Agency Workers Directive. 

This dossier has been in negotiations for more than five years but has not been formally discussed since 2004. 

In advance of these negotiations, the REC is calling on all European governments to ensure that any agreement does not limit job creation.   

Commenting on the negotiations, Helen Reynolds, the REC's acting Chief Executive Officer, said:  “It is vital that any agreement does not result in less temping jobs in Britain. The recruitment industry places 1.3 million people into temporary work across the UK every week, allowing employers to bring in extra resource at short notice.

”The central proposition in the directive is that agency workers should be entitled to the same pay and basic working conditions as a person who would have been recruited directly into that position. 

In response to this, Helen Reynolds continues: “Our independent polling shows that over 80% of temps are satisfied with their assignment. There simply isn’t the abuse on the ground to support the need for this directive. It is not in the interests of recruitment agencies to treat agency workers badly, as without them they would not have a business. The REC supports good terms and conditions for agency workers but the current provisions in the directive on agency work would only add bureaucracy and uncertainty to the recruitment of temps, thus limiting job opportunities.

"The TUC should stop mixing up these diverse issues. Their new research is simply a cut and paste job of various limited studies. The directive will make little difference to the workers quoted in the research as their employers are already breaking the law. We need to get to the bottom of why vulnerable workers are not receiving their rights and look at remedies to address this. The REC is looking at concrete measures to support these workers rather than calling for a piece of legislation that will make no difference to vulnerable workers on the ground."

Central concerns with the current draft directive on temporary agency work include:·     

Added bureaucracy: Recruitment agencies often make placements within hours of being notified of an assignment, the necessity of identifying a comparable pay rate would add more bureaucracy into the process and slow it up.       

Added risk: If a worker disputes their salary or treatment they could enforce this in an employment tribunal.  This additional risk is likely to result in employers using provisions, such as overtime, to meet peaks in demand, thus reducing job opportunities for new entrants into the labour market.·   

Where’s the gain? Abuse against all workers should be cracked down upon.  However, the introduction of equal treatment would not stop rogue employers, who are already breaking the rules, to suddenly change their practices.  Better enforcement is the only way to crack down on these rogue operators.·     

There’s a need to lift restrictions on the industry across Europe:  Recent research released from Eurociett, the European Confederation of Private Recruitment Agencies, shows that 2.1 million jobs could be created across Europe by 2012 if certain restrictions were removed from the private recruitment market.  The job creation opportunities of the temporary work industry should not be under-estimated