Temporary Workers Directive May Exclude High End Professionals
26 Jun 2008
The EU Temporary Workers Directive seems likely to come into force in the near future but, allowing for Brussels horse-trading with the UK Government, it is probable that it will exclude the highly paid top end professional contractors. This is good news for many of JSA’s clients, as any attempt to suck them into the proposed bureaucratic web might cause end users to stop employing them altogether.
In the past few months, ATSCo (Association of Technology Staffing Companies) of which JSA is a very active affiliate member, has been working hard to ensure that any legislation should exclude high end professionals, especially in the field of IT and other technical sectors, and it has lobbied for the Secretary of State for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, to have the power to exclude certain professionals.
ATSCo has been in constant communication with the EU Commission and key member states, firstly to educate them about the nature of the high-end recruitment market in the UK, and secondly to ensure that the Directive is sufficiently broad so as not to affect the industry too adversely.
For the moment, it seems ATSCo’s lobbying (among that of other interested parties), has been successful. The extent of the equal treatment clauses will now be decided on a member-state by member-state basis. Given the UK Government has been trying to block this Directive for fears of it upsetting the flexibility of the temporary labor market, we can assume that it will implement into UK law only the minimum standards required to conform with EU legislation.
In the Temporary Workers Directive, a temp is described as ‘a worker with a contract of employment or an employment relationship with a temporary agency with a view to being assigned to a user undertaking to work temporarily under its supervision and direction’. It is not specified that limited company contractors should be included in the scope of the Directive.
The Key elements of the TWD are as follows:
- Equal treatment must be applied after 12 weeks to “basic working and employment conditions”, which includes the duration of working time, overtime, breaks, rest periods, night work, holidays and public holidays
- Equal treatment must also be applied in terms of maternity pay, and other benefits such as access to transport, childcare facilities and crèche
- Positions that are advertised to permanent employees, must also be advertised to temporary employees
- Temporary workers do count as part of a union
- Any member states which have in place restrictions or prohibitions against establishing any agencies, must conduct a review within three years of the Directive becoming law
The European Parliament has three months to object to the Directive, otherwise it will become law. After the Directive has become European Law, each member state has three years to implement it fully. We can therefore expect a consultation later this year, with draft legislation laid in the first half of 2009, and finally in force by 2010, or soon thereafter. By which time we might have a new Government altogether, which could put a spanner in the works anyway!
JSA WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED ON THE PROGRESS OF THIS DIRECTIVE AND HOW IT WILL EFFECT YOU.
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