Updated Global Union Principles on Temporary Work Agencies

The Global Unions have released an updated set of joint principles on temporary agency work. Although there are varying approaches taken by trade unions in different countries and sectors to dealing with temporary employment agencies, ranging from total bans to partial bans to strict regulation, all Global Unions agree on a number of key principles. They include: • the primary form of employment should be permanent, open-ended and direct; • agency workers should be covered under the same collective bargaining agreement as other workers in the user enterprise: • temporary agency workers should receive equal treatment in all respects; • the use of temporary agencies should not increase the gender gap on wages, social protections, and conditions; • temporary work agencies must not be used to eliminate permanent and direct employment relationships; and • the use of agency workers should never be used to weaken trade unions or to undermine organising or collective bargaining rights.

Speaking about the revision of the joint principles Jim Baker, Coordinator of the Council of Global Unions, explained “The major reason why the Work Relationships Group recommended amending the principles on temporary work agencies is that it was clear in ILO meetings that private employment agencies were being treated as a “sector” even though they supplied, and in many cases, employed workers in multiple economic sectors. In that context, “sectoral” collective bargaining might divide them from the sectors in which they were working; resulting in significant differences in salaries and conditions of temporary and permanent workers, who might be performing the same tasks and working side by side.” The updated Principles make explicit that temporary work agencies do not constitute an economic sector and state that agency workers must be specifically guaranteed their right to negotiate the terms and conditions of employment with the user enterprises which effectively control them.

Continued Baker: “Another change is to make it clear that Global Unions are concerned about the effect on the rights of workers in triangular situations, where the worker does not have an employment relationship with the real employer, regardless of whether the workers are employed on a temporary or permanent basis”.

The updated Global Union Principles on Temporary Work Agencies are available here.