The credit crisis in the car manufacturing industry hit a new low yesterday when Mini announced it would need to scrap its weekend production shift - making 850 workers redundant at its plant in Cowley.
The uproar among unions followed when it was announced most of those workers sacked would be agency workers - i.e. labour brought in on temporary contracts with no rights to redundancy pay and no rights to redundancy notice. Unions said it was an "opportunistic" ploy to get rid of cheap labour at no cost to the business.
I was asked to appear on BBC News 24 last night to talk about whether agency workers should in fact have those rights and whether BMW acted unfairly, or even illegally.
For roughly four minutes(!), I put my views across that, unfortunately, agency workers are not entitled to redunancy pay outs and if they were, it would ruin the whole temp working industry:
1. Employers rely on agency workers for increased flexibility: to cover periods of heavy demand - when the firm is most busy producing orders or dealing with customers - and then has the right to let go of them when that work is no longer needed.
2. Giving agency workers the rights to redundancy pay and notice would add extra cost and burden to employing them in the first place - hence they wouldn't get hired.
3. Agency workers should know about their lack of rights when the sign the agency worker contract: unfortunately they don't have the same rights to permanent staff and that's final. In some cases agency workers have been so long at one company there may be scope in law to prove they are employees of that company, but this is rare.
4. In a recession agency workers are vital to keeping the economy up - the fact they are flexible labour means they get hired at all - if they had permanent employee rights employers may not offer anybody any jobs.
5. When the upturn comes, agency workers will be vital to meet that upturn in demand. Without the flexiblity that comes with hiring them quickly - sometimes within days - we could lose the chance to provide a service to our customers when needed.
6. Agency workers already have increased rights - a European law (the Agency Workers Directive) coming into force over the next couple of years will allow them the same rights to holiday pay, pay, overtime and breaks as permanent staff after just 12 weeks. Currently this is a year.
7. Any more increased rights would add extra paperwork and burden to employers who already have a headache dealing with the European Directive.
8. The BMW owned car maker said sales had slumped by 35% in January and there was simply no need for the workers to produce cars nobody was buying. What would you rather they do: get rid of permanent employees?
9. What happened at Mini/ BMW is mimiced at several other car plants: Honda, Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, Bentley and General Motors and Toyota have all had to cut workers or reduce workers' hours as demand slumps. These cuts were unavoidable.
10. This is more a cry for help from the government to subsidise workers' salaries during the downturn, and inject money into the industry, than it is to debate whether agency workers deserve more rights.
Agency workers, quite simply, should know they're not entitled to redundancy pay or notice, and as awful as that is in itself, that was something they signed up to when the took the job.
Comments (2)
"Agency workers, quite simply, should know they're not entitled to redundancy pay or notice, and as awful as that is in itself, that was something they signed up to when the took the job."
As though most of them had any real choice in the matter!
I suppose taking common decency, elementary fairness and human rights into account, would be asking too much?
Fortunately, capitalism has created its own gravediggers, and those poor so-and-so's at Cowley should not be wielding their shovels.
Posted by Jim Denham | February 18, 2009 9:11 PM
Posted on February 18, 2009 21:11
There are scenarios NOW where Agency "workers" would get Stat redundancy and other rights. The Agencies involved made the choice to put them through Agency PAYE whereas employment solutions exist that mitigate this risk to end client (Mini) and Agency AND gives workers pay and rights.
Posted by Rob Crossland | February 19, 2009 9:47 AM
Posted on February 19, 2009 09:47