It is important that voters know the clear dividing lines between Labour and Tory MEPs

By Claude Moraes

I have been involved in the six year legislative battle on the EU Agency Workers Directive. This is just one example of a controversial piece of social legislation which will affect the lives of 1.4 million British workers employed as temporary agency workers. How many people reading the articles on LabourList are aware that this significant new EU law will have to implemented by the UK government in the coming weeks?

My guess is that very few outside the affected employers and trade unions will be aware of this, or indeed important recent votes by Labour MEPs to remove the UK’s opt-out from the Working Time Directive, or our groundbreaking vote on the new Climate Change Package just before Christmas. Just three examples of the laws which are now made by the European Parliament when it acts as an equal lawmaker with the member states of the EU – called the Council of Ministers.

So how does EU law actually work in practice and why is it necessary? The key point about new social legislation is that the EU acts under the social chapter, because very often employers are multinational operations and it is important for the EU’s internal market to legislate for all 27 EU countries to effectively protect, in this case EU workers. The EU Directive on agency workers, for example, will give UK workers protection against dismissal with minimal notice. It will be implemented in 2009 – too late to protect the 850 car workers at BMW Cowley summarily dismissed with an hours notice, and no compensatory payments.

The Cowley experience is one that Labour MEPs have been warning about for many years. On the one hand we have many agency workers who make the choice to work in this way, and who enjoy decent levels of pay. But there has been a growing proportion of the UK’s 1.4 million temporary workers who have become extremely vulnerable in a globalised economy and now in the recession. It is also the case that the UK has the largest pool of agency workers in Europe. The growth of agency work, particularly in manufacturing, without new employment protections was laid bare at Cowley.

Labour MEPs and our major trade unions UNITE, GMB, UNISON, and the CWU in particular have been working for many years on the need to protect workers in ‘atypical’ forms of employment such as temporary work and have warned that the massive increase in new forms of working such as agency work would create a two-tier working situation where some agency workers would be doing the same job as their full-time counterparts, often working for many years, but lacking basic entitlements to equal pay, overtime, working time regulations, breaks, holidays, maternity and health benefits.

After a six year legislative battle, the European Parliament voted in October 2008 for a Directive giving temporary workers the same basic rights as full time employees. The deal struck between the UK government and UK trade unions created a twelve week qualifying period for the UK – not what the TUC wanted (they had argued for day one rights) but infinitely better than the CBI demands for a year before parity.

It is right that Labour MEPs took the long view on how vulnerable this group would become and legislated for basic protections. Our government will now have to transpose the Directive into UK law – all the indications are that they will do it in this parliamentary term. The Directive will give equal rights in most areas after twelve weeks, but the devil will be in the detail as to what rights agency workers will actually get. It is important that we lobby for good UK employment law in this area, not just on the right to equal pay and holiday, but understanding that the grey areas, including health benefits, maternity leave and bonuses are interpreted positively in the UK transposition. Speed is also important – after a six year struggle, and an attempt in the House of Commons to promote a private members’ bill, those who campaigned for these rights need to see commitment in the legislative timetable here in the UK.

In the run up to the European elections this year it is important that voters see the dividing lines between Labour MEPs who want to build in a social dimension in Europe of decent employment protection in an uncertain globalised economy, and those who reject this approach. The Conservatives responded to the Cowley layoff by promoting their loan guarantee scheme but staying silent on the absence of any rights for these workers. It is the case that the root problem in any redundancy situation is the health of the company concerned, but without employment protection workers and their families can literally be thrown on the scrapheap. Not only do the Conservatives reject new agency workers rights, but they want to dismantle the Social Chapter altogether, and they defend the recent ECJ judgements in Viking, Laval and Ruffert.

Flexibility in our economy has been important, but so too is the Cowley car worker who left the plant two weeks ago with one hour notice and nothing to show for five years of skilled work on the assembly line. She is a symbol of what can happen when employment protection is not modernised to meet the new realities of the British economy and our workforce.

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