Today I would like to pay some attention to the work agencies in the EU. For instance, it is a really important and controversial issue in Slovenia. Gibanje has very firm opinion about it. For instance, Slovenian employment agencies might treat law differently and this is one of the biggest issues. Obviously we cannot say that all work agencies in Slovenia don’t stand for the best interests of employees, some of them take care of their employees fairly and with respect.
But the situation is very diverse in different European countries, inspite of the common law in this field for whole EU (The EU Temporary and Agency Workers Directive (2008/104/EC).
This EU Directive is intended to ensure people, who work using employment agencies service, that they will be provided with the same payment and conditions as staff who do the same work in the same place.
The EU Directive 208/104/EC has main two objectives:
1) to guarantee the protection of European temporary agency workers and,
2) to create an appropriate structure for the use of temporary agency work services.
Eurociett (the European Confederation of Private Employment Agencies) pointed out that at the end of 2011 and since then the Directive has been transposed in an unbalanced way: “While national regulation on equal pay is being implemented in the Member States, the review and lifting of existing, unjustified restrictions has not taken place to the extend needed”.
But how does the system work? Even though regulations diverge in different countries, in most cases the agency hires employee and then temporary let out on hire to a company.
Therefore the basic idea is quoteworthy but if we compare agency work and the rest of the forms of employment, the temporary agency work has the worst record for working conditions, considering the access of employees to information about the risk at the workplace, and repetitive labour. When the Directive came into effect, these disadvantages dramatically dropped.
However in some cases around the Europe temporary agency workers still might get less training; they have to do more often a shift work, have less time to accomplish a job and get less power over the work they do compared to with other staff. Moreover, temporary agency workers have less information about the safety and get into workplace accidents more often. In this situation agency work represents bigger job uncertainty. Off course there are positive examples in the EU. For example, talking about the payment, Scandinavian agency nurses earn more than permanent employees. But unfortunately there are many proofs that show lower payment for similar work accompanied with exclusion from bonuses and benefits given to other staff, especially in less developed European countries.
Resources:
http://www.eurociett.eu/index.php?id=119
http://www.etuc.org/a/501
http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=706&langId=en&intPageId=207
http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/types_of_employment/full_time_employment/agency_workers.html
