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A plan by MPs to give temporary agency workers pay and conditions equal to those of employees should have made clear from its outset that it excluded IT contractors. As it didn’t, Andrew Miller MP, who drew up the plan, said he is wording a definition to exempt professional service providers, like IT contractors, who use agencies from equal treatment. It will fit in to secondary laws attached to clause 4 of the Equal Treatment Bill, allowing the Secretary of State to decide “the applicability of the rights to special classes of employment”. Yet like the catch-all term “agency worker,” stating that “professional service providers” are exempt could undermine the bill, designed to “end the mistreatment of agency workers.” “I have not completed my definition yet but it will…most certainly be designed to exclude professional IT contactors”, Mr Miller told Contractor UK. “[But] I don’t want to create a loophole so a disreputable agency could define say a building tradesman [is] a professional service provider to get round the legislation.” When he was drafting the Temporary and Agency Workers Bill, the MP said he was “conscious” that he did not want to include providers of professional services who chose to work via agencies. He also intended to exclude those ‘who temporarily contract work by other means’ from the bill’s founding principle that temps using agencies should be treated equally to employees. And although the bill awards employee-style rights to “any person who is supplied by an employment business to do work for another person under a contract,” Mr Miller reassured its final draft would “not impinge on professional contractors.” But there's actually no need for the bill, according to Roger Sinclair, legal consultant at Egos Ltd, an IT contractor advisory. "I'm not persuaded that this proposed legislation is necessary, and indeed it seems to be driven by unions on behalf of permanent staff, who see their own jobs as threatened by temporary workers. "If it were necessary, then it could probably be implemented for workers earning less than, say, twice minimum wage only. "But the economy as a whole shows that what we have right now works. And if it works, why fix it?" Yesterday, Gordon Brown reportedly gave the go-ahead for ‘secret’ talks with Brussels to knock out a deal on extra protections for temps in Europe. Under the Agency Workers Directive, temps would get the same pay, conditions and pensions as their directly-employed counterparts after six weeks in the job. Though the government has said it won't damage the UK's flexible labour market by rubber-stamping the commission’s demands, which could cost employers and temporary jobs. According to an unnamed official close to the talks, the UK hopes to be able to “apply the directive flexibly,” the Financial Times reported. “The government has made it clear that it is looking for a solution on the European Directive and it is therefore no real surprise that discussions are taking place with the EC at this stage,” said the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, responding to the news yesterday. “Ultimately, the aim must be to ensure that any directive includes sufficient flexibility to be workable in the UK,” added Tom Hadley, a director at the REC. “Even the French President [Nicolas Sarkozy] made some very complimentary noises about the UK’s labour market and it is in nobody’s interests to jeopardise the opportunities that agency work provides for workers and the vital resource that it affords to employers.” Pointing to the behind-the-scenes talks, the REC said it was “optimistic” that any political compromise will not have a negative impact on the UK's temporary jobs market. But any attempt to foist full-time employment rights onto self-employed freelancers is likely to be fiercely unpopular, as Mr Sinclair hinted. "I'd imagine that having their 'pay and conditions in line with the conditions of permanent staff' is exactly what most of the contractors I deal with would not want." Apr 10, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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