Public and Commercial Services Union

On average, agency workers in the UK receive substantially lower pay than permanent staff, have worse terms and conditions and fewer employment rights.

Although they have working time and holiday rights, they are entitled to only four weeks paid holiday a year, including bank holidays (this means that in practice they get only 12 days holiday).

They have no pension and rarely have access to training and development. They have virtually no job security and can be sent back to the agency without any opportunity of finding out the reason they have lost a booking or to challenge it.

The UK lags behind Europe in the rights it gives to agency workers. In most European countries, agency workers get pay equal to that of permanent staff and similar working conditions and training opportunities. In many countries, the circumstances in which agency workers can be used is restricted.

Summary of agency workers’ rights

Below is a brief summary of agency workers’ rights. The TUC has published a more detailed guide, ‘Know Your Rights’, available from the TUC Worksmart website.

All workers have some important rights from their first day of work:

• the national minimum wage and limitations on deductions that can be made from your pay
• working time rights including limiting the number of hours you work per week, rest breaks and holidays
• rights to health and safety protection
• the right to join a union and for the employer to allow you to be accompanied at a workplace disciplinary or grievance hearing (although there is no legal obligation on a union to represent you)
• the right to be protected for whistleblowing
• protection from discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, disability, religion or belief, sexual orientation and age.

In some circumstances agency workers can get:

• statutory maternity pay
• statutory sick pay

But the conditions are tough and not many qualify.

Agency workers have some special rights:

• the agency is not allowed to charge you a fee for finding you work, and they cannot insist that you buy other services such as CV writing
• the agency cannot withhold your pay because they have not received payment from the client employer or because you cannot produce a signed timesheet
• it is the agency’s responsibility to establish the hours you work and to pay you for them
• the agency must give you a written statement of terms and conditions when you sign on, covering employment status, rate of pay, payment periods, leave and notice, and they cannot change these without your agreement
• the agency must check health and safety risks before you are placed with an organisation.

There are some important rights which most agency workers are excluded from:

• maternity and paternity leave and other flexible working rights
• the right to paid notice on the termination of employment
• the right to claim unfair dismissal
• the right to redundancy pay (either statutory or the more generous contractual payments such as those made under the Civil Service Compensation Scheme).

This is because of the employment status of agency workers:

The law in this area is developing and PCS Research, Legal Services and Thompsons lawyers are keeping this under review.

If reps are considering a legal case, they should email Imogen Radford at imogen@pcs.org.uk or write to her at 160 Falcon Road, London SW11 2LN.