Concerns raised over agency worker rights and pay
03 December 2018
Agency workers are earning less than people doing the same work while employed directly, according to a recent survey and a BBC report.
Conducted by Resolution Foundation, its research showed that some agency workers are earning more than £400 a year less than directly employed staff and can also receive reduced levels of support.
The BBC said this could include "unclaimed holiday or sick pay, and deductions for uniforms".
There are nearly 1m people employed by agencies around the UK at present and Resolution Foundation senior policy analyst Lindsay Judge said agency working practices have "been largely absent from recent discussions about the modern world of work".
Although the BBC report contained no direct links with the FM sector, the implications indicate that there will be many areas where the research results require further consideration.
It should also be noted that there were no details on how many agencies were implicated by the findings.
However, the Resolution Foundation said it is concerned that agency staff may be unaware of their employment contract rights, following the revelation that £500m of holiday pay was not claimed during the survey period.
It also showed that 500,000 agency staff have not signed up to pension schemes, despite the fact that they were eligible for auto-enrolment.
The results of the research came from official Office for National Statistics data, with the Resolution Foundation comparing pay rates of two people working in similar roles.
This provided the figure of how an agency worker could be paid less, as the comparison showed the figure to be 22p an hour when it compared pay rates for the two individuals.
The BBC report can be found here.