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22 September, 2008
On 17 September, ICEM affiliate la Centrale Générale (FGTB/ABBV) of Belgium organised its Fourth Annual National Action Day to highlight the lack of workplace rights by staff employed by labour agencies.
Union activists distributed the FGTB/ABVV’s annual “Interim Times” in public areas across the country. The publication gives news and facts on agency work, and the inherent social and workplace problems that stem from agency work.
“Interim Times can be found in French here and in Dutch here.
FGTB/ABVV organised a national press conference on the day last week, and staged good-humoured activities at different venues across Belgium. At one such event, a cycling track was erected in a Brussels square and pedestrians were invited to ride contorted bicycles with square wheels, symbolising the chaotic nature of labour agency work.
The Belgian trade union seeks functioning equipment and permanent jobs to be the absolute standard model on bicycles and in employment. The union does recognise that contract and agency labour may provide workers some jobs, and might be useful in limited, well-described circumstances.
Examples might be a sudden and unexpected rise in a company’s workload, or a temporary replacement of an absent permanent worker.
Conversely, however, FGTB/ABVV notes the often poor quality of jobs undertaken by such workers, and the fact that temporary or agency labour leads to far more insecurity for workers. One statistic from “Interim Times” is that agency workers in Belgium are twice as likely to have an accident when compared to permanent workers.
"Join the Chaotic Employment Circuit"
FGTB/ABVV warns against further broadening of current Belgian rules on agency labour, citing risks involved when agency workers are hired on a “try them out” basis. Labour agencies often use one worker after another in such cases, thus terminating one just prior to the point when a worker must be made permanent under the social rules.
The FGTB wants more information to be given to shop stewards in Belgian workplaces on the use of agency work in their company. It also calls for enhanced inspection mechanisms to curb abuses. The Centrale Générale FGTB furthermore firmly rejects the system where agencies themselves directly offer workers a contract of unlimited duration. According to the union, this will lead to situations where there no longer is any link between the salary of a worker and the salary of a comparable worker at the user-enterprise, opening the door for further misuse.
One particular suggestion by the union is to start creating “precarious worker union reps”. i.e. giving one or more union representatives at the company the task of taking care of agency workers. There certainly appears to be a need for this, given that official Belgian figures show a growth of 27% - from 2004 to 2007 - in the number of hours worked by agency workers.