Current News
11 Sep 2007
Trades Union Congress - REC leads industry counter-attack
A specific session is planned for tomorrow (Wednesday September 12) and the initial keynote address by the TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber has included the expected calls for more regulation.
Commenting on the TUC stance, Tom Hadley, the REC’s Director of External Relations, says: “We welcome the TUC’s recognition that agency work has an important role to play within the UK labour market and absolutely agree with the need to address the activities of rogue gangmasters.
In his keynote address, the TUC General Secretary has listed specific examples of worker exploitation and argued that ‘good agencies are being brought down by the bad - giving the whole sector a shady reputation.’ This was used to back the renewed calls for the EU Agency Workers Directive to be unblocked in Brussels.
“Agency standards are already heavily regulated through the Employment Agency Act and the examples of abuse commonly mentioned by the TUC are in clear breach of existing regulations such as National Minimum Wage.
“The key to driving out bad practice is to ensure that these existing regulations are effectively enforced which is why the REC has pledged its support to recent Government initiatives such as the Vulnerable Workers Enforcement Forum.”
In his speech addressing Congress, Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a number of conciliatory statements such as generally ‘supporting the proposal for an Agency Workers Directive in Europe’. It has always been the Government’s line that the UK is not opposed to a Directive per se, but that any new legislation should not have a negative impact on the UK labour market.
The Prime Minister’s statement did not contradict this established position, although the REC will be closely monitoring the outcome of the latest discussions on the AWD that are taking place in Brussels this week.
Elsewhere, the Prime Minister mentioned that the Government ‘will legislate to tighten agency regulation’ which is in reference to the increased sanctions on labour providers that routinely flout existing regulations and is a move that the REC has welcomed as part of its better enforcement campaign.
