Disguised Employees

[DimPrawn]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4338656.stm

Unions have likened the working conditions of some of the UK's 600,000 temporary workers as being reminiscent of the "dark ages".
The TUC has delivered a dossier of abuse of temporary staff to ministers.

The dossier included instances of temps being denied training, having to pay for work clothing and receiving lower wages than permanent staff.

However, employers said the TUC's case studies were not representative of how temps are treated generally.

Harrowing

The dossier contains sometimes harrowing depictions of life as a temp worker. One temporary factory worker said her life was filled with insecurity and she felt treated as a second-class citizen.


Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary

"Over the years we have endured the stress and strain of not knowing if we were to be finished at a minutes notice if costs had to be cut in the area we worked in," she said.

"We never got asked if we wanted to do any over time as that was for the permanent staff as well, we would be stealing their overtime if we got it."

The worker added that she was often asked to do work that she had not been trained for and received only Statutory Sick Pay even after being involved in a workplace accident.

Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary, said such experiences were not uncommon.

"Temping is vital to today's modern economy, but, with no proper protection too many agency temps are suffering working practices from the dark ages."

"Too many are treated like a throwaway second-class worker and have to take it or leave," Mr Barber said.

But in response the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), which represents recruitment agencies, said it was unfair to depict the treatment of temps in such a negative light.

"We are not condoning poor treatment but to talk about dark age treatment just isn't right," Marcia Roberts, REC deputy chief executive, said.

"Our research suggests that temp working suits the employer, the lifestyle of the worker and boosts the UK economy."

The group added that temps were far from being low-paid and low-skilled, with over half having attained an A-level qualification.

European directive

The TUC has long called for temps to be given the same rights as permanent staff.

We don't want something in the labour market that will stifle employment growth

Marcia Roberts, Recruitment and Employment Confederation

Under UK law, temporary workers have no right to redundancy pay, to claim unfair dismissal or to take maternity leave.

But last month the TUC's campaign took a serious blow when the European Commission shelved the draft Agency Workers Directive (AWD).

The AWD would have ensured that temporary workers enjoy the same conditions as permanent staff.

The AWD is one of 68 draft directives earmarked by the European Commission to be scrapped in a bid to cut red tape.

Business opposes the rights of temps being brought into line with permanent staff.

"We don't want something in the labour market that will stifle employment growth," Ms Roberts told BBC News.


So how do you bum-on-seat umbrella-dwellas paying IR35 feel about this terrible treatment you temps are getting?

Perhaps you guys might consider leaving this terrible tempdom and running your own business instead?

[voron]

Why should a temp have the same rights as a permie? If they don't like it they should either find a permie job or become a contractor. The whole point of hiring a temp is that they are temporary and you can release them whenever their services are no longer required. The clue is in the name.

The group added that temps were far from being low-paid and low-skilled, with over half having attained an A-level qualification.

Bloody hell, A-levels? Wow, with such qualifications they must be highly skilled

[The Lone Gunman]

Why should a temp have the same rights as a permie? If they don't like it they should either find a permie job or become a contractor. The whole point of hiring a temp is that they are temporary and you can release them whenever their services are no longer required. The clue is in the name.


Bloody hell, A-levels? Wow, with such qualifications they must be highly skilled

The problem is that many people working as temps are actualy filling permanent positions. Many "clients" have realised they can duck the employment responsibilities by employing temps, particularly where the employee does not represent any knowledge or working practice and can therefore easily be replaced.

It is exactly like Victorian era employment.

[Not So Wise]

Under UK law, temporary workers have no right to redundancy pay, to claim unfair dismissal or to take maternity leave.

And got to ask, why would they? If temps were going to have all all the drawbacks of permies might as well just get permies

Though will say, some companies "abuse" the ability to hire temps instead of permies, when i first came to this country 10 years i took at temp position just to get on my feet while found something decent, ended up being sent to british gass accounts department, of some 200 people in that department only the 5 most senior managers were permies and a lot of the temps had been there for years.

If a position is "open" (aka not filled by a permie but a temp or temps ) for more than a year companies should be forced to make it permanent position to stop that sort of thing.

[BobTheCrate]

Not so long ago the ball was on the other foot and the Unions had all the power, the companies having very little control.

Maggie came along and changed all that - thank goodness.

Then the Blair Trilogy came along and now I realise why Unions were born.

[tim123]

And got to ask, why would they? If temps were going to have all all the drawbacks of permies might as well just get permies

But that's exactly what they want to happen.

Not all employement sectors are like IT. People don't temp in other sectors because it's what *they* want to do and trade off flexible working for some other benefit (in the case of IT, more money).

They temp because the employers give them no effing choice, the company gets the benefit of the flexible worker and the employee gets less of everything that they would have got if they were a perm.

Personally I think that there should be statutory protection in place for these workers. It's separating them from us that is the difficult part (actually it's persuading the do-gooders that we really do want to be separate that difficult - and this is not helped by contractors taking action against employees for employment rights because they think it is the solution to IR35).

tim

[The Lone Gunman]

this is not helped by contractors taking action against employees for employment rights because they think it is the solution to IR35.

I assume you mean employers? Are you the same muppet that postst this kind of drivel on Shhh99?

The clients have no consequences when we are IR35ed, chasing them for employee benefits when the arrangements THEY made with the agent show us to be employees is the only way to encourage them to sign up to a B2B contract in the first place.

[Not So Wise]

But that's exactly what they want to happen.

It's not a matter of what the temps want, of course they want "everything", only human nature. But there is good reasons for the temp classification for worker to exist, to create a portion of the workforce that is more flexable for employeers needs as dictated by the market, something the economy needs if it is going to be able to function well.

Problem here is many companys are abuseing that section to cut their legal/financial obligations when the positions/temps really are for all intents and purposes "permanent".

Personally I think that there should be statutory protection in place for these workers.

No there should not be, system at that end should be just as it is, what should be changed is controls should be put in place to stop companys having temps as "disguised employee's" to sidestep employment regulations/laws/obligations.

and this is not helped by contractors taking action against employees for employment rights because they think it is the solution to IR35).

Total opasite situation but funny enough with the same root cause, contractors did not and still don't want to be classed as employee's, but companys were "abuseing" this clasification same as they do with temps, useing them to fill permanent positions.

Goverment rightly stepped in, problem was because the companies and large consultancys (the biggest gainers from ir35 as before it they could not compete to well vs contractors cost wise) had more political clout than the contractors, goverment penalised the contractors instead of the companies.

Now contractors are classed as employee's with none of the benefits, but all the costs/regulations/overheads of permanent emploment have been lumped on solely the contractors side with no downside to the companys.

Now this would not have been so bad on the run up to 2000 as it was then a contractors market, they could have just raised their rates and passed some or all of that extra cost back to the clients by raiseing their rates, but it came into force around the same time as the downturn, thus forceing most contractors to absorbe all the costs themselves.

And now 5 years on, the situation is slowly getting worse, instead of working with contractors to make them not IR35 cought we now have companies doing the exact opasite, and why not? No matter how much a contract makes a contractor looks like employee (and thus how much protection it gives the company) they will still never be actually classed as an employee as far as the goverment (but not the tax man) is concerned, thus protecting the company with no downside.

The only way this will ever change is if there starts to be a downside for companies, aka a chance for a contractor to be deemed an employee with all the rights and benefits that entails, then and only then will we start to see companys eager to draw up IR35 compliant contracts, instead of the situation we have now where if they are doing such a contract they are doing us "a favor"