Agency staff to get equal rights after 12 weeks

The government agreed on Tuesday to give temporary workers the same rights as full-time staff after only 12 weeks in the job, in a deal likely to break years of deadlock over a European Union law on how long people may work.

A deal struck between the government, employers and unions is likely to pave the way for a compromise on EU-wide proposals for equal pay and conditions for agency employees at a meeting of the 27 EU labour ministers on June 9.

This, in turn, could ensure Britain and some other EU states keep their opt-out from EU rules restricting the working week to 48 hours since European ministers, frustrated by more than three years without progress, linked the two issues last December.

For some countries, concessions made on one of the laws could be offset by more favourable solutions to the second.

"The two will be linked. If there is an agreement on one I think there will be an agreement on the other one as well," said European Commission spokeswoman Katharina von Schnurbein.

"The likelihood is quite high," she said.

A deal to change the 1993 EU working time directive would come as a relief to most governments as many face a choice between expensive increases in staff in their emergency services or lawsuits from workers unless the legislation is changed.

This is because the EU's top court has ruled that on-call time at the workplace should be counted as working time, putting many emergency and health workers over the 48-hour limit.

Ministers agreed long ago to change the law so that inactive on-call time is not counted as work, but they could not agree on exceptions to the 48-hour rule, blocking an overall deal.

Britain and some other EU members have opt-outs, but a group led by France wanted to scrap all exceptions, arguing the 48-hour week protects employees from exploitation and accidents.

Britain fiercely defends the opt-out as part of it liberal approach to the economy.

After a change of government in France last year, Paris dropped its demand that the opt-outs should be scrapped and in December all ministers agreed in principle to leave it be.

But in return, they asked Britain to make concessions in a review of the law on the rights of the EU's 8 million temporary agency workers. Between 600,000 and 1.4 million of those are in Britain, forming 2.6 to 5.1 percent of the workforce.

The deal is likely to satisfy countries focused on setting minimum social standards, because it gives temporary workers equal rights to full-time staff from day one, unless trade unions and employers agree otherwise.

"Today's agreement between social partners will facilitate the negotiations in the (EU) Council," EU Labour Commissioner Vladimir Spidla said in a statement. "I am confident that the Slovenian Presidency will bring about an agreement at the next Employment Council."

The umbrella Trades Union Congress welcomed the move to give agency staff more rights in the workplace, after a six year offensive by unions to win concessions.

But business has long resisted giving temporary workers more rights and lobby groups argued the changes could result in fewer jobs for agency staff.

"This is a disastrous deal for small businesses, which rely on the flexibility provided by agency workers," said Tina Sommer, EU and International Affairs Chair at the Federation of Small Businesses.

She said the deal would boost the cost of temporary workers making them unattractive to small businesses.

The Confederation of British Industry - the nation's biggest business lobby group which helped broker the deal - said half of agency assignments last less than 12 weeks and will therefore be unaffected.

"There has been a major risk of damaging legislation coming from Brussels, and the CBI has judged that the government's proposals represent the least worst outcome available for British business," said John Cridland, deputy director general at the CBI. Sick pay and pensions are excluded from the deal.