PEOPLE FOCUS - CIPD

ANALYSIS PEOPLE FOCUS
found out were paid €11.20 per hour
while on probation for six months and
then €13.20 per hour.
“They received no overtime payments,
shift premium, were not covered for sick
pay and had no pension entitlements”,
King told the Oireachtas Committee.
But while the unions claim the issue of
the exploitation of agency workers is
now more than anecdotal, they have
yet to produce any concrete or hard
statistical evidence that this is the case.
Siptu estimate the number of agency
workers at 30,000 which is less than 2%
of the entire workforce - a figure also
mentioned by Minister for Labour Affairs,
Billy Kelleher.
Speaking in the Dail earlier in the year,
Kelleher said the Government was
“deeply committed to decent
employment standards” and pointed out
that it has already put in place an
extensive range of employment
protection legislation.
While there has undoubtedly been an
increase in the use of agency workers in
the last few years as employment levels
shot up, outside of the few cases cited
by the unions, there is no evidence of
the widespread abuse of agency workers.
Many workers who are hired through
an agency do so through choice
either because of the specialist job
they do or the desire for flexibility in
their own working lives.
A significant number of nurses, for
example, working in the health service
are hired through an agency but there is
no question of such agency nurses being
exploited.
Begg told the Oireachtas Committee that
while it would like to have equal
treatment of agency workers with their
permanent colleagues apply from day
one, it is prepared to compromise on six
weeks as proposed under the
controversial EU Directive.
“The idea of 12 months which has been
floated at Government level is crazy, as
such a period would be so long as to
16
eliminate for all practical purposes most
realistic working scenarios that would
arise” said Begg
A recent survey in the UK by KPMG and
CIPD of 1,500 employers showed that
while 27% felt agency workers should
never qualify for the same rights as
permanent employees, 21% said they
should be given the same pay and
contract of employment conditions from
the first day.
Over one-third (35%) of employers in the
KPMG/CIPD survey said the same
treatment should apply within the first
six months and another third said there
should be qualifying period of at least 6
months.
Employer view
Brendan McGinty, HR director with
IBEC, points out that agency workers
already enjoy the same protection as
permanent workers under unfair
dismissals legislation, holiday pay,
minimum wage and working time.
McGinty said that the issues of agency
workers is a complex one and cannot be
addressed by universal proposals. He
said the notion of a six week derogation
as proposed by the Portuguese
presidency was grossly inadequate.
The employers view is that given the
widely differing issues with and level of
agency work across the EU, each
member state should be allowed to
choose how to apply the nondiscrimination
according to national
practice and labour needs.
While remaining a small part of the
workforce nevertheless agency workers
fulfil a vital role of enabling companies
to carry out work that they might
otherwise not be able to do due to a
lack of in-house resources or expertise,
said McGinty.
When employers presented their case to
the Joint Oireachtas Committee on
Enterprise, Trade and Employment in
April, Ibec accused the unions of simply
seeking to “protect sector pay norms
established through collective
bargaining” than any real concern for
temporary workers.
Isme described the proposal to give
agency workers equal pay and conditions
after six weeks as “absolutely crazy”
Isme chief executive Mark Fielding said
the proposals was “unwarranted,
unworkable and unwelcome” and would
place an onerous financial and
bureaucratic burden on employers.
“It is akin to using a sledgehammer to
crack a nut, where 99 per cent of
compliant SMEs will be hampered,” said
Fielding.
Enterprise Minister Michael Martin has
already hinted that some compromise on
equal treatment can be reached under
the Employment Agency bill. But with
the issue already highly contentious
across the EU and still unresolved, it is
unlikely that the Minister will jump the
gun in national legislation on the
proposals contained in the draft EU
directive.
Accordingly, the ‘deal breaker’ issue
of agency workers is likely to be
resolved at EU level first. In the
interim and so as not to delay and
the national pay talks, some formula
of words can be stitched into the
Agency bill committing the
Government to negotiations on the
implementation of the EU directive if
/when it is agreed during the French
presidency starting in July. ■