Agency Workers Directive - implementation delayed

One of the biggest shakeups of the temporary workers marketplace will be the EU driven Agency Workers Directive which Britain is committed to implement in the next few years. Originally devised to protect vulnerable temporary workers across Europe, it has serious ramifications for the vibrant contractor workforce in Britain.  This is because the Directive assigns rights to contractors that many do not want to have and imposes burdens on employers which makes hiring contractors expensive and unattractive. These include holiday time, child care, assisted transport, pensions, more parental support and full entitlement to employee benefit schemes. As a result temporary workers would become very expensive to recruit, impossible to employ through umbrellas or directly by agencies and contractors would lose their independence. Consequently this legislation has been vigorously opposed by recruitment companies, umbrella companies, the PCG and other contractor bodies and much of industry. Britain has obtained only one key concession - that these rights and responsibilities will apply only to contracts of more than twelve weeks in length.

It was originally feared that this legislation would be introduced before June 2010, but now the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (the old DTI) have confirmed it will not be implemented until October 2011. This is largely because of concerns that it will make recession recovery, which is often initially led by more contract and temporary work, even harder. The different pressure groups now have a little more time to wring some further concessions from government and protect the contractor marketplace which has given Britain flexibility of labour and the opportunity for rapid growth over the last two decades.