Agency Workers
The employment rights of agency workers have been on the EU’s agenda for some time and they have also been a much litigated topic in our own courts. With an estimated 1.3 million agency workers in the UK, the Agency Workers Directive and the resulting legislation from our Government could potentially have quite an effect on the world of employment law.
Agency workers are those workers employed by
businesses who supply temporary staff to organisations (often referred to as the ‘end user’)
for assignments of work for various periods of time.
Since 2001 there has been a wealth of cases where
agency workers have tried to argue that they have
had the status of employees. The common argument
is that the end user has treated them as if they were
a permanent member of staff and that, as they have
worked on a particular assignment for a long time,
the court should imply a contract of service between
them and the end user. This type of argument is
usually made to an Employment Tribunal because the
agency worker’s work has been brought to an end
and the worker wishes to claim unfair dismissal. Only
employees can bring claims of unfair dismissal under
the Employment Rights Act 1996 so for them it is
important that they have employee status.
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