AGENCY STAFF - THE SECOND CLASS WORKERS

23-02-2008

Dozens of backbench Labour MP’s are taking on the government by trying to force through a private members bill improving the rights of agency workers. About time too, says Simon Gray – an agency worker himself.

"MPs have voted overwhelmingly - by 147 to 11, a margin of 136 – in favour of proposals to give agency workers the same rights as permanent staff - but the government could still block it" (see BBC link here)

When I heard about this bill going through parliament, I was - predictably - quite excited.

For the last four years I have been an agency worker, a so-called 'temp', working in the same team for the same organisation, sitting on the same chair at the same desk using the same computer. In fact, within the team I work I'm actually the longest serving member.

So how can anybody with a straight face tell me that it is fair that, whilst two members of the team I work with had two weeks off on full pay earlier this year with Norovirus, whilst I was getting increasingly stressed about the financial impact such an illness might have on me of two weeks without pay, should one or the other of my colleagues have infected me?

How can anybody with a straight face tell me that it is fair that I get half the amount of annual leave that my colleagues - some of whom have worked for the organisation for less than a year - get? That it is fair that I am denied access to training and benefits that it is part of my job to promote to the permanent staff?

And the final crunch: how can anybody with a straight face tell me that it is fair that, after four years, I am denied the opportunity to apply for jobs internally - including my own job - whilst a part timer working only a couple of mornings a week gets instant access to that benefit the day they start?

Opponents of the bill, to give agency workers the same rights as
permanent workers on day one, have used the made-up case
study of a worker engaged for a week who goes off sick on their second
day.

Well, actually under this bill they wouldn't automatically get sick pay - because in this instance permanent staff aren't automatically entitled to sick pay on day one either.

But if an agency worker has been employed for six months, then damn right they should be paid sick pay on the same basis as their permanent colleagues if
they are ill. Only Ebenezer Scrooge would deny that.

The CBI claims that giving agency workers rights worthy of a modern civilised economy would lead to a quarter of a million job losses. This is the same CBI which claimed that the introduction of a national minimum wage, and the adoption by the UK of the Europe-wide Working Time Directive would lead to countless job losses - yet in the time since those were introduced there are actually more jobs, not fewer.

In the meanwhile, the situation I am in is such that I have to think of myself. Much as I love my job, and have chosen to stay in it for idealistic reasons, I have to look into seeking employment elsewhere. How is that of benefit to my employer - especially given that, as a 'temp', the notice period I have to give is considerably shorter than my permanent colleagues?

The government of the Labour party - the party of the workers, supposedly - is not going to actively stand in the way of this bill the way it had previously threatened, but without direct support it is still unlikely to become law. The question is, what do the Conservative or Liberal Democrat parties have to say to me?

Should agency staff have the same rights as other workers? Leave a comment on The Stirrer Forum.