NUS scores victory on temporary and agency workers’ rights
On Friday 22 February 2008 more than 140 MPs voted in favour of the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal treatment) Bill.
The bill is designed to increase the rights of temporary and agency workers. This is a key concern for NUS as there are many students who are working in temporary jobs or working for an agency, and some of those who are being ill-treated by their employer as a consequence. This affects not only current students, but also those recent graduates who decide to take on a temporary or agency work to pay of debts that they incurred while studying.
This bill proved to be quite controversial in the run up to the vote with some MPs voicing their concerns; including fears that such a move could cause mass unemployment or economic downturn. These same arguments had been used when the minimum wage was being proposed. However, once the minimum wage was introduced, the opposite happened: employees were happier in their workplace, there was less turnover of staff, and employers were encouraged by such improvements to invest more in training and so on.
These changes are long overdue: in 2004, the government had met with trade unions and admitted that temporary and agency workers got a raw deal. The outcome of this was the Warwick Agreement; a commitment by government to address this if elected at the next general election.
However, after the Warwick agreement and general election, little progress was made on this issue. 'Qualifying periods' - where temporary and agency workers could get equal rights after a year of employment - were discussed but there failed to be any definitive action to give all workers the rights their deserved from the offset.
Paul Farrelly MP brought a private member's bill in 2007, however it was talked out. Consequently, when Andrew Miller MP put down the current private member's bill, it was vital that it was given momentum and the message sent that this issue was too important not to be discussed.
NUS joined the trade union movement on this issue and encouraged students to make sure their voices were heard in this debate. Many of you wrote letters to and met with your MPs and thanks to all this hard work in conjunction with the trade union movement, we managed to get MPs into Parliament on 22 February, so thankfully when it came to the vote there were 147 in favour and only 11 against.
This has been a significant vote as it was the largest rebellion since 1997 and it gave a clear signal to the government that something needed to be done on this issue right away. As a result the government has committed to establishing a commission that will be chaired by Sir George Bain head of the Low Pay Commission.
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