MOVES TO regulate employment agencies represent “too little, too late”, according to Labour’s Joe Costello TD.
Legislation aimed at regulating employment agencies is currently going through the Dáil, but Labour’s Europe and human eights spokesperson remarked: “In many ways, it is too little too late. The boom is over and there are no jobs for the employment agencies to fill.”
In 2009, a total of 615 agencies were based in Ireland catering for 35,000 workers, compared with 4,000 in 1997.
During the boom, agency workers – often from eastern European countries – were utilised by companies that wanted to take on new workers at a lower rate. The worker would remain an employee of the agency, and not the company they were placed with.
Exploitative practices affecting agency workers in Ireland remain “a major issue”, according to Siptu.
Moreover, the proposed legislation does little to improve their rights, says Loraine Mulligan of the union’s research department.
“We are not happy with the current text. The text in this case involves regulation of employment agencies rather than the substantive issue of equal treatment of agency workers,” she explained, referencing an EU directive which Ireland must adopt by 2011, giving agency workers equal pay and conditions with directly-employed workers in the same job.
Mulligan pointed out that this directive “could have been brought forward and incorporated into the current bill”, and expressed concern that the legislation does not prohibit the use of agency workers to replace striking workers.
She said that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), which with Siptu is affiliated, submitted a number of proposed amendments to the legislation, which she hopes are analysed by the Dáil committee that the bill has been sent to.
Among these is a recommendation that the code of practice referenced is “a statutory code rather than voluntary code”, she said.
While a welcome inclusion is clarification “that agencies can’t charge agency workers for placing them”, Mulligan nevertheless expressed concerns about how this would be policed.
“We’re concerned in that it doesn’t really improve the situation,” she said of the legislation. “We don’t think it’s an effective piece of legislation at all.”
The Employment Agency Regulation Bill proposes that employment agencies must be either licensed in Ireland or within the EEA (European Economic Area) in order to legally practice.
It also sets out a code of practice for standards of behaviour, and includes “whistle blower protections” for agency workers who expose exploitative practices.
