Working Lives Research Institute
Richard Pond, Howard Potter, Eugenia Markova
12 months - 2007-2008
European social dialogue budget - DG Employment
The focus of this project is how agency workers are represented at work and the problems that can arise in terms of the differing approaches of the main organisation and the employment agency that supplied the agency workers.
The different regulations in each country imply differences in conditions regarding pay and other working conditions for agency workers. Agency workers also face different possibilities regarding representation by unions or works councils and to get vocational training or have their health and safety concerns dealt with.
Despite the differences, there is at least one common issue across the five countries: union membership among agency workers is very low. There are hardly any local unions at the agencies as it is obviously difficult to gather people from different user firms and organise meetings and other activities. This is especially a problem in Sweden and Poland where the representation system requires local unions at the agencies. In France (to a certain extent), the Netherlands and the UK agency workers can be represented by worker representatives at the user firm, in the UK by the union and in the Netherlands by work councils or as in France by either of them.
Opportunities to improve the representation of temporary agency workers come under two headings - firstly adapt organisational union structure to the triangular employment relationship in the temporary work industry, i.e. the differentiation between employer and the temporary agency workers workplace; and secondly more and better information and procedures in the use of agency workers including information to user firm union/work council and temporary agency workers.
The project group also produced a 25-minute film, Agency Work, with examples of temporary agency work in four countries. The film is accessible through streaming video in four languages at the University of Gothenburg website:
For the final report and a ten page short summary with policy recommendations in five languages, see links below:
Short summary of findings: Representaion of Agency Workers (Pdf)
For a link to the 150 pages final report Representation of Agency Workers:
Final report Representation of Agency Workers (pdf)
Download the final report and summary in other languages from here: