| TUC brings temp workers’ exploitation to the fore |
|
|
The issue of temporary staff abuse has been taken up by unions who said that as many as the 600,000 temporary worker population was functioning under conditions very akin to those prevalent in the ‘dark ages’.
The TUC, thereby, released a ‘dossier of abuse’ to ministers, dealing with temporary staff and their working conditions. It stated in the dossier, denial of training to such staff along with compulsion to pay for their work clothes and excruciatingly low payments for work when compared to the permanent staff.
As expected, employers refused to agree with the dossier, saying that case studies carried out by the TUC could not be generalised or concluded as the real treatment meted out to temporary workers usually.
Meanwhile, the dossier states certain truly disturbing instances in the life of a temporary worker that speaks for the highly insecure and ‘complex’ housing in most temp staff. A female temp worker confessed that she was treated like a ‘second-class’ citizen, and remained apprehensive about her job day after day, saying, “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. 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.”
She added that temp workers were required to do work for which they had not received any training, besides getting merely the Statutory Sick Pay in spite of getting injured or hurt during work.
The general secretary of TUC, Brendan Barber, endorsed the lady’s statements and said that such happenings were commonplace for temp workers and said, “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.”
Nevertheless, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) representing recruitment agencies felt that the temporary worker environment ought not to be projected so pessimistically as it could prove detrimental to the future of such agencies.
Deputy chief executive at REC, Marcia Roberts, was quoted saying, “We are not condoning poor treatment but to talk about Dark Age treatment just isn't right. Our research suggests that temp working suits the employer, the lifestyle of the worker and boosts the UK economy.”
REC claimed further that temps were not in the least paid low wages, nor were they low-skilled, since more than 50% of the temp staff had achieved the ‘A-level’ qualification.
Equality of rights and facilities for both temporary and permanent workers has been an issue that TUC has been fighting for since long, as the UK law exempts temp workers from the right to redundancy pay and maternity leave, along with the right to file claims against unfair dismissal.
Nonetheless, TUC received a major setback when the European Commission abandoned the Agency Workers Directive (AWD) draft last month, which listed provisions to place temporary workers at par with the permanent staff. The European Commission has included the AWD draft amongst the 68 draft directives assigned to stand annulled in its exercise of arresting red tapism.
Posted
on : Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:15 GMT | General News
By : Paula Jenkins
|
| |
| Related |
|
|
|
