The EAT in Wood Engineering v Robertson has given its support for companies continuing to hire casual labour long-term by way of agencies.
Well crafted contracts will continue to ensure that agency workers remain exploited and without rights.
The EAT has decided that the presence of mutuality of Obligation (an expectation that a company will provide regular work and that a worker will do the work) and Control of the worker (The company telling the worker when, where and how to do his job) were not sufficient in themselves to decide that the worker was to be considered an employee if the existence of mutuality of Obligation and Control could be accounted for by way of the contractual agreement signed. Where mutuality of Obligation and Control are contained in the contract and the contract itself is not a sham, then according to the common law rules of contract, the contract will remain valid, and the agency worker will not be an employee of the end user company.
So if workers sign their rights away in their desperation to get a job, the law is with the employer. This is wrong and workers organisations need to fight this.
The TUC should now make agencies and agency workers, many of whom are unionists, a priority in their talks with the government regarding new legislation. This pool of millions of disenfranchised agency workers affects the union movement as a whole and the workers they represent. Its existence is a disgrace to our society.
Agency workers exist without the rights that are considered as essential to employees welfare, that of job security, holiday, sickness and pension rights. Agency workers are often low paid, paid lower than unionised labour, and are often ignorant of what rights they do possess. The vast majority of agency workers are effectively used to undermine the unions and are therefore a direct threat to all workers in Britain today.
The continuation of agencies allows for legal discrimination between different classes of workers. It divides workers and undermines the rights of all workers.
The EAT has now decided decisively in favour of the exploiters of workers, of companies who hire their workers long-term via agencies in order to boost their own profits.
With the courts having now unambiguously decided in favour of the exploiters of workers. The only remedy now is for new legislation to be adopted
giving workers hired via agencies the same rights as employees after their first year.
© Workrep 6 / 8 / 2007