Claude Moraes has been involved in the six-year legislative battle on the EU Agency Workers Directive and says it must become law in this parliamentary term
THE EU directive designed to give agency workers protection against dismissal with minimal notice and virtually none of the rights of full-time workers is due to be implemented in Britain this year. That will be too late to protect the 850 car workers at BMW Cowley who were summarily dismissed with an hour’s notice and no compensation. The Cowley experience is one that Labour MEPs have been warning about for years.
Many agency workers make the choice to work in this way and enjoy decent levels of pay. But a growing proportion of this country’s 1.4 million temporary workers have become extremely vulnerable in a globalised economy and now in the recession. It is also the case that Britain has the largest pool of agency workers in Europe. The problem with the growth of agency work without new employment protection, particularly in manufacturing, was starkly illustrated at Cowley.
Labour MEPs and trade unions including Unite, the GMB, Unison and the Communication Workers’ Union, have been working for many years on the need to protect workers in atypical forms of employment, such as temporary work.
We warned that the massive increase in new forms of working, such as agency work, would create a two-tier working situation where some agency workers would be doing the same job as their full-time counterparts, often working for many years, but lacking basic entitlements to equal pay, overtime, working-time regulations, breaks, holidays, maternity and health benefits.
After a six-year legislative battle, the European Parliament voted in October 2008 for a directive giving temporary workers the same basic rights as full time employees. The deal struck between the Government and the unions in Britain created a 12-week qualifying period for this country. This was not what the TUC wanted – it had argued for rights from day one – but it was infinitely better than the CBI’s demand for a year before parity.
Gordon Brown’s Government will now have to transpose the directive into British law. This must be done this parliamentary term. The directive will give equal rights in most areas after 12 weeks, but the devil will be in the detail as to what rights agency workers will actually get.
It is important that we lobby for good employment law in this area, not just on the right to equal pay and holiday, but understanding that the grey areas, including health benefits, maternity leave and bonuses, must be interpreted positively.
Speed is of the essence. After a six-year struggle, those who campaigned for these rights need to see commitment in the legislative timetable of the House of Commons.
In the run up to June’s European elections, it is important that voters see the dividing lines between Labour, which wants to build in a social dimension in Europe of decent employment protection in an uncertain globalised economy, and those who reject this approach. The Conservative’s response to the Cowley lay-off was to promote their loan guarantee scheme. They reject new agency workers’ rights and want to dismantle the Social Chapter altogether – and they defend the recent European Court of Justice judgements in Viking, Laval and Ruffert.
Flexibility in our economy is important, but so is the Cowley car worker who left the plant with one hour’s notice and nothing to show for five years of skilled work on the assembly line.
She is a symbol of what can happen when employment protection is not modernised to meet the new realities of the British economy and our workforce.
Claude Moraes is a Labour MEP for London and the party’s employment and social affairs spokesperson in the European Parliament
