New collective agreement for temporary agency workers

From 1 July 2006, all building and construction workers employed by the temporary work agency Adecco are covered by the collective agreement for the building industry in Norway. The agreement is the first of its kind for temporary agency workers, and it emerged as a result of increasing trade union membership among the company’s Polish workers.

As of 1 July 2006, the collective agreement for the building industry covers workers employed in the building and construction section of the temporary work agency Adecco. The majority of employees affected are foreign workers, mainly from Poland. The collective agreement was put in place after a large number of workers joined the Norwegian United Federation of Trade Unions (Fellesforbundet), which enabled the union to demand the establishment of a collective agreement within the company. Adecco is a member of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (Næringslivets Hovedorganisasjon, NHO), and is obliged to enter into a collective agreement when at least 10% of relevant workers are union members. According to the media in Norway, approximately 500 of Adecco’s 1,150 employees in the building industry section have already joined the trade union.

Type of agreement applicable

A central issue that had to be resolved by the social partners was deciding which collective agreement should be made applicable for the building and construction workers. Fellesforbundet insisted on applying the building industry agreement, while the employers argued that temporary work agencies should not, as a matter of principle, be bound by the agreement of the companies to which it hires workers, but rather by the agreement in force in the temporary work agency itself. However, since no agreement is in place for temporary work agencies affiliated to the NHO, no alternative option was available. As a result, the social partners agreed to apply the building industry agreement. Nevertheless, the social partners have also stipulated a supplementary clause, which states that, in the event of a new collective agreement for temporary work agencies being established within the NHO, this agreement will be subsequently introduced.

Parts of the building industry sector agreement have already been made applicable through extensions of collective agreements for large parts of Norway (NO0509103F). The new collective agreement means that local trade union branches will have greater influence in the workplace, both in relation to company-level wage bargaining and to other issues regarding wages and working conditions. In addition, all of the main provisions in the central collective agreement have also been made applicable.

Commentary

The Adecco agreement is one of the first of its kind in Norway. The temporary agency work sector, which covers approximately 1% of Norwegian employees, has traditionally had a low union density rate. Thus, unions have not been in a position to demand the establishment of collective agreements in any of the larger companies. The majority of larger temporary work agencies are part of the National Federation of Service Industries (Servicebedriftenes Landsforening, SBL), which is a member association of NHO.

The temporary agency work sector has traditionally hired out office workers, canteen staff, security personnel, etc, and many of those employed in the industry have only had short-term contracts, often while seeking other types of employment. This trend has made it difficult for the trade unions to gain access to these companies. However, in recent years, the industry has extended its activities to other types of occupations, such as health personnel, construction workers and workers within the manufacturing industry. Over time, this may steer the occupational composition within the industry in the direction of an increased number of employees with more long-term and stable employment relationships. If this is the case, it should be easier to address the issue of establishing collective agreements.

A central question will thus be what type of agreement and conditions shall be made applicable. In this regard, an important challenge will be the fact that the building industry incorporates a wide variety of occupations. However, in Norway an agreement made applicable to the entire industry still seems a long way off, since the number of unionised workers is very low in most sections of the industry.

The Norwegian building and construction sector employs a considerable number of workers from the new EU Member States, and there is ongoing discussion on how the social partners should deal with issues such as pay and working conditions for this group of workers (NO0312103F; NO0604029I). Meanwhile, Fellesforbundet has been intensifying its efforts to acquire new members among this group of employees. At present, the union has more than 1,000 members from Poland and the Baltic countries.

Kristine Nergaard, Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research