News & Articles

Equality for all

Many readers will have been at the recent REC Summit conference held in London on “Equal Pay and Benefits for Temporary Workers”.

The good news is that it seems that the pending regulations will include a derogation (qualifying) period of 12 weeks before temps will be entitled to equal rights.

The bad news is that the TUC are adamant that they will not agree to linked periods of employment.  This means that agencies may not be allowed to place temps on consecutive 12 week contracts, unless there is a material gap between each period of employment.

It seems to me that the best way around the new rules is to persuade clients to use only temporary staff for a particular task.

The rules only apply if there is a comparable permanent employee doing the same work, so in the absence of a comparable employee you can pay the temps whatever you like.

Time to go public?

Public sector recruitment has had a tough time in recent years.  Public sector clients have embraced framework agreements, neutral vendors and PSL’s enthusiastically and as a result margins have been driven down mercilessly.  But that’s true in the private sector too, I hear you say.  Yes it is, but private sector clients are usually motivated by the need to make a profit and they usually balance the desire to cut costs with the need for good quality staff.  By contrast public sector clients often take decisions that appear to be driven more by political motives than by sound business principles.

Another problem is that in many cases the government is the only significant client in the market place and many recruiters would agree that the government has often abused their monopoly position over the years.

Things may be set to change.  Private sector recruitment has boomed in recent years, but the slowdown in the economy will very likely affect the private sector much more than the public sector.
I would recommend recruiters to look to build a balanced portfolio of clients in the coming months.  There is a plethora of clients that will not be much affected by an economic slowdown.  They include charities, trade associations, professional and trade institutes and private health providers, as well as local and central government authorities.  If you are in a market where these ‘not for profit’ organisations operate give them a call.