North West Region Take Agency Campaign To The House Of Commons

The North West Regional Youth Officer, Maeve Kennedy travelled to the House of Commons to meet with the NW group of Labour MPs to ask them to support Andrew Miller’s Private Members Bill. The meeting was organised by the Regional Secretary, Carl Webb.

Maeve who was accompanied by Sally Bridge, CWU Assistant Secretary, explained  that the misuse of agency workers is now commonplace in the UK and this group of workers is being exploited by bluechip companies like BT. It is not exceptional, it is the norm.  Maeve made the point that the end user effectively dictates the terms and conditions of agency staff but without having to take responsibility for those terms and conditions. She also made the point that agency staff was used to undermine the terms and conditions of directly employed workers and to weaken collective bargaining. 

BT in Blackburn took on a large number of agency staff and the fact that they were allowed to employ them on inferior terms and conditions meant that they were in a position to negotiate lower rates of pay for the staff they did convert to permanent BT contracts last year. Manpower staff in Blackburn have not had a pay rise in nearly four years, meaning not only are they employed on inferior terms and conditions relative to their permanent BT counterparts but those terms and conditions are deteriorating on a yearly basis. 

Employment agencies are in competition with each other and the absence of equal treatment legislation enables end users to use one agency to undercut another, giving companies like BT the opportunity to further lower pay rates, meaning agency staff are caught up in a terms and conditions race to the bottom. End users have been so successful in lowering pay rates that on some BT sites the profit margin for the employment agency used is so small that it is effectively impossible to give agency staff a pay rise. It is also not possible for agency staff to take industrial action against the end user that is responsible for exploiting them.      

From the meeting it was clear that the CWU in the Northwest has succeeded in convincing MP's in the region of the argument for equal treatment for agency workers and 'and for ensuring they have a good grasp of the subject.

CWU North West would like to place on record our thanks to Joan Humble MP for facilitating the meeting and all the NW Labour MPs who have supported the campaign.

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