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EC plans to make hauliers ve holiday pay to temps
Page 6
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• by Miles BrIgnall Hauliers could find themselves having to give agency drivers holiday and sickness pay and other benefits if a European Commission proposal is adopted to extend temporary workers' rights.
Details of the plan were leaked earlier this week to universal condemnation from industry, with the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) immediately going on the offensive to brand it "very damaging to all concerned".
The EC is considering forcing companies hiring temporary staff through agencies to give them the same pay and conditions as they give to permanent employees. Hauliers would be forced to make pension contributions, award holiday and sickness pay and possibly even bonuses to agency drivers if the UK government adopts the directive in its existing form.
Currently more than a million people are employed as temps in the UK; many, including hundreds of agency truck drivers, already receive some of these benefits. It is unclear what impact the proposal's introduction would have on them, but the suggestion is that the burden of sick pay and holiday pay would pass from the employing agency to its customer—the company actually putting the employee to work.
John Bussey, chief executive of national agency Driver Hire, says most of his drivers already get the benefits the EC wants them to have and are often paid higher hout rates than their full-time colleagues.
"This potentially has huge implications for this industry but it's also very difficult to see how such a proposal would work in practice," he says. "A driver could work for three different employers in a week—would they each be expected to contribute sick pay for that day? That would almost be unworkable."
CBI director general Digby Jones has written to the EC complaining that the plan would remove incentives to hire temps. He argues that it should be up to their employment agencies to ensure they are treated equally.
A spokesman for the Freight Transport Association describes the proposal as "very odd" and points out that it goes against the whole concept of temporary workers.
• See Comment. page 8.