Employers would be allowed to hire staff provided by agencies on lower wages than their own permanent employees are paid for similar work. These measures are being proposed by Minister for Enterprise and Jobs Richard Bruton.
The proposals would allow companies and State bodies to provide inferior terms and conditions to temporary agency workers for specific periods – possibly up to six months – before having to bring them up to the levels of their directly recruited personnel.
Some trade unions have already signalled their opposition to the Minister’s proposals, which come just weeks after the row over changes to the joint labour committee system for determining pay and conditions for thousands of other workers across the economy
Government sources said last night that, as they saw it, the Minister’s proposed reforms would for the first time oblige employers to provide temporary agency workers with the same basic terms and conditions as their permanent employees.
However, there would be a time lag before these provisions would come into effect.
Agency workers are paid by employment agencies which, in turn, assign them to another employer to carry out specific duties. Agency workers are common in various areas ranging from secretarial support to nursing and manufacturing.
At the height of the boom an estimated 40,000 such agency workers were employed – or about 2 per cent of the then two-million-strong workforce.
There are currently about 2,000 agency workers in the health service.
Mr Bruton has told trade union and employer leaders in a confidential letter that he intends to seek Cabinet approval for an effective derogation from an EU directive on temporary agency work.
A key element of this directive, which has to be signed into Irish law by December 5th, is the principle that agency workers should be treated in the same manner in terms of pay and conditions such as annual holidays as personnel hired directly by an employer to do an identical job.
A derogation from this principle, allowing temporary agency workers to be treated differently for a specific period, is permissible if the Government can secure an agreement with employers and unions.
In the absence of such an agreement agency workers will be entitled to equal treatment from the first day of employment.
In the UK, temporary agency workers can be employed for three months on inferior terms and conditions before the equal treatment principle applies. However, Mr Bruton has pointed out that in some countries the principle of equal treatment applies only after six months.
In his letter to the leadership of Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Minister indicated that the provision of day-one equal treatment for agency workers could have implications for jobs.
“Without the benefit of some leeway in transposing the directive in the shape of a framework agreement, Ireland will be in a position of significant competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis our European trading partners,” he said.
“This would be particularly keenly felt given that our immediate and major trading partner, the UK, has already secured agreement for a waiting period of 12 weeks, an arrangement I understand extends also to Northern Ireland.
“In the current climate and with the significant challenges that face us on the road to economic recovery, we must avail of the flexibilities afforded by the directive.”
However, the Ministers proposals have already been criticised by some trade unions.
Siptu’s acting health divisional organiser, Paul Bell, said last night that the union would reject any “eleventh-hour attempt” to negotiate a derogation from the EU directive on temporary agency work.
“At this point in time the Siptu position is that nothing has been said from the Government side that would lead us to the view that there would be anything of benefit to workers in agreeing any derogation,” he said.
“In the health services there are in excess of 2,000 employees on agency contracts and we have had a very negative engagement with the HSE this year when they awarded a contract to a single agency staff provider.
“That contract was awarded on the basis of having our members’ salaries cut in the nursing, healthcare assistant and radiographer grades. Siptu determined then that the only way to protect health workers from such an attack was through the full implementation of the directive.”
A spokesman for the Minister said Mr Bruton’s priority was to find a fair and balanced solution “that will enable protection for and creation of as many jobs as possible”.
Sinn Féin today described Mr Bruton's latest proposals as a "crusade on pay and conditions."
The party's spokesman on workers' rights, Senator David Cullinane, said the Government would be better off creating initiatives to produce real, sustainable jobs rather than "attacking agency workers and driving down wages further.
Mr Cullinane said the proposals would create deep division within the workplace as agency workers "will be seen as under cutting permanent employees' pay and conditions."
Socialist Party MEP Paul Murphy said the idea of enshrining lower wages and conditions for agency workers for a period of time represents an attack on all workers.
“The outcome would be clear – with agency workers used as a battering ram to lower wages and conditions for all," he said. "I’m sure that Mr Bruton may claim that it will assist job creation. The reality is otherwise, as lower wages generally in the economy will add to the deflationary downward spiral and the depressed domestic economy which was highlighted by the ESRI yesterday."
