Unions and employers differ over conditions of temporary agency workers

In June 2006, the Trades Union Congress published research into the use of temporary agency workers. It reported increased use of agency workers at all skill levels, but with such workers having inferior pay and benefits. However, the main employer organisation for the recruitment industry cited research showing that agency workers enjoyed higher levels of job satisfaction than other workers.

Temporary agency work is an increasing phenomenon across most of the EU and is particularly common in the UK, according to recent research from the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions on [temporary agency work in an enlarged European Union](/search/node/eiro OR thematicfeature14?oldIndex). With regard to the experience of such work for the agency workers, the UK social partners differ in their interpretation.

On 2 June 2006, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) reported findings from its 2005 survey on temporary agency work, Working on the edge (288Kb Word), based on a sample of workplace representatives. Responses were received from 85 workplaces representing over 100,000 workers and employing nearly 15,000 agency staff. The research revealed that agency workers were generally seen as being relatively worse off than comparable permanent staff.

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), which is the main employer organisation for temporary work agencies, dismissed the report. REC referred instead to independent, European-wide research which reported that agency workers had more positive attitudes to work and better well-being than their permanent counterparts.

TUC findings

The findings of the TUC survey show that agency workers are important to the organisations in which they work. They were normally employed in mainstream rather than peripheral roles and were often engaged for lengthy periods. A third of the survey respondents indicated average contracts of 11 months or more, and over 80% of the respondents noted that the number of agency workers had increased over the past five years. The main reasons given for taking on temporary workers relate to coping with fluctuations in demand and ‘outsourcing risk’ by employing agency workers instead of permanent staff.

With regard to pay, only six respondents stated that agency workers were paid the same wage or more than permanent employees. Overall, lower pay reflected lower basic rates (cited by 28% of respondents) or the effect on earnings of less favourable treatment concerning premia, shift pay, bonuses or other matters (cited by 15% of those surveyed). Agency workers were also reported to have inferior entitlements to sick pay, holiday leave, training and occupational pensions. In addition, respondents referred to problems resulting from the precarious nature of their work in relation to employee involvement or raising grievances.

In terms of regulation, only 20 respondents had heard of the government’s ‘Guidance on the conduct of employment agencies and employment businesses regulations 2003’ (162Kb PDF), which was introduced to regulate the conduct of the private recruitment sector and to establish minimum standards that both the workers and user enterprises can expect from agencies. However, around a third of those surveyed indicated that a workplace agreement or policy was in place to regulate the employment and/or pay of agency workers.

The TUC report concludes that ‘while agency workers are increasingly likely to be engaged in the same or very similar work as directly employed workers, they frequently receive worse pay and conditions. In effect, agency workers are discriminated against in the workplace on the grounds of their employment status’. The survey report also highlights that ‘employers are increasingly seeing temps as a way of getting staff on the cheap’, whom they can dispose of without regard to unfair dismissal or redundancy payments.

TUC General Secretary, Brendan Barber, emphasised that: ‘Clearly temporary jobs are always going to be preferable for some people who have family or other commitments, but there is no reason why the thousands of individuals who opt for agency work should be getting such a raw deal.’ He underlined that the government should introduce domestic legislation to protect agency workers and ‘do all it can to breathe life back into the shelved (European) directive’ (EU0601203F).

Employers’ reaction

REC dismissed the TUC report as ‘outdated research reflecting an outdated view’, based on ‘a number of isolated case studies’. The employer organisation also stated that ‘TUC is living in the dark ages’. REC’s Managing Director, Gareth Osborne, further commented that: ‘It is an outdated fallacy that temps are low skilled and underpaid. The fact is that a majority of temporary or contract workers choose flexible working options for positive reasons, particularly the variety and autonomy that is afforded and the opportunities for learning new skills’.

REC referred to an EU study involving seven countries and over 5,000 workers which found that temporary workers had a better experience of work than permanent staff. In January 2006, David Guest and Michael Clinton of King’s College London published the UK findings of this study, Temporary employment contracts, workers’ well-being and behaviour: evidence from the UK (257Kb PDF). The research involved analysis of 642 questionnaires from workers in 19 organisations, including 25% of workers who worked under different types of temporary employment contracts. The report revealed that ‘workers on temporary contracts reported better well-being, better general health, more positive attitudes towards work and better work behaviour than their permanent counterparts’. However, a possible explanation for these results lies in ‘the deterioration of permanent jobs’, notably related to ‘high levels of work overload’ and less well-defined job roles.

James Arrowsmith, IRRU, University of Warwick