13 May, 2010
Now in its seventh year, ICEM’s Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) Campaign has reached a level of maturity unforeseen at its founding in 2004. The campaign has seen remarkable developments in Africa, where ICEM workshops have presented evidence leading a government to deport the managing director of a multinational and in Senegal (below) where a new law is now on the books better regulating labour-hire firms. In Asia-Pacific, ICEM affiliates are determined to bring CAL workers under collective agreements and in Latin America, the priority of organising these workers so they have the same rights as permanent workers is growing and slowly but surely succeeding. The use of temporary and agency labour has now found a new dimension: a financial crisis in which employers try to dig out of their economic mess by turning to agency labour, instead of responding in pro-social manner with direct and full-time employees that build a decent and just society from the bottom up. In this issue of ICEM’s CAL newsletter, we highlight current and topical stories in this ongoing struggle.
Peru Says Petrobras Contract Workers Need to be Made Permanent
Through a series of thorough and well-designed inspection visits, held between October and December 2009, labour inspectors in Peru investigated whether or not Skanska Peru, a “major subcontractor” to state-owned Brazilian oil company Petrobras, respected Peruvian labour law in regard to contract and agency labour in Piura, Peru. The inspectors, who worked closely with the Sindicato de los Trabajadores de Skanska de Peru, which is affiliated to ICEM affiliate FENUPETROL, wrote down their findings in a lengthy report, published early in 2010.
Of the total of 1,210 workers that Skanska Peru employs, 380 work in Piura, a town in the Talara region. The Skanska workers perform extraction, production, maintenance, and sales jobs for Petrobras.
According to Peruvian law, a subcontractor needs to run its operations on “its own account and risk,” needs to have its “own financial and technical means, as well as its own material,” needs to be responsible for its own operational results and needs to directly employ its own workers. Moreover, subcontractors should have more than one client and they cannot be entities that “merely supply staff,” with workers having a direct and immediate relationship with the user-enterprise.
The inspectors found that Skanska Peru violated all of the above. Petrobras, as the user-enterprise, not only decided on the total number, the working hours and the salaries of the Skanska workers employed through the “service contract,” Petrobras also “agreed” on collective bargaining agreements and was involved in the evaluation and sanctioning of contract staff. The material used (including even the IT needed to provide the Skanska services) was also the property of Petrobras. Skanska was furthermore found to be working for only one client in Talara, i.e. Petrobras.
Where there merely is a “straightforward provision of personnel,” the law in Peru foresees that the personnel in question need to be incorporated into the user enterprise. As Skanska was found to “fail to comply with the requirements to be a subcontractor,” the inspectors came to the conclusion that, as foreseen in the law, the 380 Skanska workers in Talara must be given a “direct and immediate” employment relationship with the user-enterprise, i.e. Petrobras.
The process currently is in a reconciliation stage, with all parties being given a chance first to react to the report.
Sweden’s 2010 Collective Agreements Give First-Ever Language to Stem Agency Labour
Trade unions in four important industrial sectors of Sweden – metal, pulp and paper, forestry, and food service – achieved ICEM-heralded contract language protecting the rights of full-time and permanent workers in wage negotiations in March and April 2010. The first-of-its-kind language, covering 550,000 workers in these sectors, will serve as a major deterrent in utilizing temporary workers hired through labour agency companies.
The language, varying in minor degrees from one sector to the other, was proposed as a bargaining priority by LO-Sweden, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. It will serve as a very effective restraint, the ICEM believes, for the recent rush by Swedish employers to use temporary labour.
Prior to 1992, all such labour was provided by government-operated job centres. But a change in law that year, in effect, privatised such centres. Yet, the growth of the mega-agencies was slow to catch on in Sweden over the next decade, mainly due to a Nordic social ethic that rightfully grants life-long work and retirement benefits.
In the early years of the last decade, that slowly began to change. And with the coming of the financial crisis in mid-2008, the trend clearly shifted. Mass layoffs became the norm and in the second half of 2009, when even the slightest uptick in a company’s business caused a need for added staff, company after company relied on employment agencies to fill that need.
Swedish labour unions clearly saw their own need to protect the rights of full-time workers who were victimized by the crisis.
Language in the new collective agreements stipulates that employers have the obligation to negotiate with the respective union before turning to labour-hire companies. Those negotiations are to occur on the local level and must take into account permanent workers who have been made redundant and are on re-hire lists. If such workers are qualified for the jobs that an employer seeks to outsource to an agency, those workers must be re-hired or else the employer faces steep financial penalties. Thus, the effective deterrent is in place inside the collective agreements.
If the trade union and employer cannot agree on qualifications, the case goes to the national level where a joint panel will decide. (In one sector agreement, the national panel also consists of an independent mediator in the event the joint labour-management panel cannot agree.)
Employers face the risk that, if no agreement is made at the local level, and they do bring in agency workers and the national panel rules in favour of the redundant worker, the company ends up paying double salaries, with the redundant worker, in some cases, getting up to a SEK 65,000 judgment award. The employer generally has five days to halt the use of agency labour when such employment is challenged before the penalty applies.
One sector agreement contains a joint labour-management committee to monitor this specific aspect of the agreement in order to shape a “good practices” standard of employment regarding short-term contract and agency labour that is also intended to assure that there are no violations of the language.
All in all, this Swedish model to restrict temporary employment, curtail the exploitative nature of labour agency firms, and promote the concept of decent work through permanent and sustainable jobs is a good one. It is also a model that trade unions in other countries should closely examine.
Origins of a New CAL Law: ICEM Work in Senegal
Following the start up seminar of the ICEM Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) project in Dakar, Senegal, in March 2009, the Industrial Workers' Union of Senegal (SUTIDS), conscious of the issue and consequences on workers and their organisation, started a media campaign through the major outlet channels of the country.
The union did this through the two biggest television channels of Senegal and the West African region.
Statements made by the general secretary of SUTIDS, those of the ICEM/CAL Project Coordinator for Sub-Saharan Africa, and a representative of the Minister of Labour were broadcast and commented on in most of the languages in Senegal (Ouolof, French, Toucouleur, Sérère and English).
The conclusions of the seminar were also sent to the Office of the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister’s Office, the National Assembly, the Senate, the National Labour Advisory Commission, the Ministry of Labour, and the ILO.
When the General Secretary of SUTIDS met the Prime Minister of Senegal, he had the opportunity to raise the issue of outsourcing and interim employment, making the country’s leader aware of the sensitive nature of the issue. The Prime Minister requested to see all of the reports of the ICEM/CAL seminar held in March 2009.
SUTIDS therefore organised a media and advocacy campaign among the highest state authorities of Senegal.
These actions contributed to the adoption and promulgation by the President of the Republic of Senegal of Law No. 2009- 1412 on Private Recruitment Agencies and Casual Employment.
ITGLWF Survey: Garment Sector Experiences Big Increase in Short-term, Agency Work
The International Textile, Garment, and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF) has conducted a survey of how Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) is affecting workers and unions, and what steps are being taken to deal with the issue. Forty-eight ITGLWF affiliates completed the online survey, which was conducted with the assistance of the ICEM’s CAL project.
The results of the survey overwhelmingly indicate that CAL is an increasing problem in the textile, garment, and leather sectors, with 69% of affiliates who responded saying that the share of short-term and agency labour work in their sector and country increasing over the past year. A full 37% said that CAL had increased by 16% or more. Some 26% of respondents said that the share of CAL has decreased.
In parallel with affiliates of the Global Union Federations ICEM and the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), who conducted similar surveys earlier in the year, ITGLWF affiliates indicate that CAL workers receive significantly lower wages than permanent, direct-employed workers. Over 66% of those who replied said that wages paid to CAL workers are less than those paid to permanent workers, and 21% said that CAL workers’ wages are less than half those of regular workers. Some 41% of those who responded indicated that the wages and benefits gap between permanent, direct- employed workers and CAL workers had increased as a direct result of the global economic crisis.
The survey results make clear that employers evade their obligations to CAL workers in various ways with non-payment of overtime, denial of maternity and family leave, and denial of vacation and holiday leave being the most common forms of abuse. Some 18% of the total responding said that CAL workers are denied access to social security and pensions, and 15% said that the biggest way employers evade their obligations centres on occupational health and safety.
There is a substantial difference in the number of CAL workers that ITGLWF affiliates represent. Fifty-two percent of affiliates indicated that CAL workers make up between 0 and 5% of their membership, while 19% say that CAL workers made up more that 31% of their membership. Almost one quarter of affiliates said that they had organised more CAL workers in the last year, while 17% said they had lost CAL members. The survey asked affiliates what were the obstacles to organising more CAL workers, and the results clearly demonstrate that the biggest obstacle to CAL workers joining a trade union is fear of dismissal or discrimination. Twenty-three percent of affiliates responding say that government legislation was a barrier to organising CAL workers in their country.
ITGLWF affiliates are including CAL issues in their collective bargaining agendas. The four most common CAL-related bargaining objectives were to guarantee equal pay for similar work, to ensure non discrimination and realisation of trade union rights, and to convert precarious jobs into permanent jobs.
In response to the fact that there is an increasing trend towards indirect and insecure forms of employment, 43% of affiliates indicated that they are currently taking action to ensure that new jobs created in the sector are filled by permanent workers with direct employment relationships.
More details on the results of the ITGLWF CAL Survey are available here.
Global Union Federations Gather in Asia-Pacific Region to Develop CAL Tactics
The annual ICEM Asia-Pacific Regional Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) seminar took place in Singapore on 18-19 April. The seminar, hosted by the ICEM with the assistance of Germany’s Friedrich-Ebert Foundation (FES), brought together 52 delegates, including representatives of the ICEM, the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI), International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), International Textile, Garment, and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF), Public Services International (PSI), and Union Network International (UNI).
Union leaders and activists from 14 Asian countries, members of the Western European Team of experts from Denmark and Sweden, and representatives of the ICEM Secretariat and the FES attended the meeting, spoke about the impact of precarious employment in their countries, and shared strategies which they had developed to deal with CAL issues.
ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda had been scheduled to attend the seminar, but was unable to do so because of the disruption to European flights caused by volcanic ash from Iceland.
Participants discussed how CAL is being used to undermine the right to freedom of association, by companies who are letting go of permanent staff and hiring temporary workers in their place. Participants also discussed how the global economic crisis is being used by multinational companies as an excuse to reduce their permanent workforce, despite the fact that CEOs are receiving ever increasing pay packages.
The participants proposed a number of next steps, including that unions should make CAL a priority issue and prioritise organising of CAL workers; that they should cooperate in campaigning at a national level for legislation which would make user enterprises responsible for agency workers;, and that collective bargaining should fully include CAL issues.
Participants also proposed that a workshop be arranged to discuss how dialogue can best be arranged with labour-hire agencies to assure that labour rights and standards are upheld.
Job Vulnerability Puts Health of Temp Workers at Risk
In occupational health and safety, accidents are best described as the results of failures in those systems that ought to keep workers safe. These can include choices of materials, tools, equipment, processes; the design of specific tasks or the work process; level and competence of supervisory control; workplace environment including noise, dust, fumes, heat, cold, and conditions of floors, surfaces, lighting; and the characteristics of workers themselves, including experience, skills, training, and other human factors.
When one or more of these systems fails, an accident can occur. Was an inappropriate tool provided? Was the task poorly designed to begin with? Were supervisors absent or negligent? Was the workplace environment inhospitable? Did the workers have the appropriate skills and capabilities to do the work safely? Systems failures that expose workers to hazards must be corrected at the source, with personal protective equipment used only where elimination at the source is not possible or practical.
Unions demand three fundamental rights for workplace health and safety: the right to know about the hazards of the work; the right to participate in health and safety systems, and the right to refuse unsafe work.
The systems above are far more likely to be weak or absent entirely for Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) workers. The hazards they face are less likely to be corrected at the source, and more likely to be dealt with by providing personal protective equipment - if even this is provided. Finally, contract and agency workers are in a weak position to demand any of their three basic occupational health and safety rights, without the risk of losing their job.
The vulnerability of CAL workers is reflected in accident statistics. Last year in Belgium, agency workers were twice as likely as permanent workers to suffer a workplace accident. The ICEM’s Peruvian mining affiliate, FNTMMSP, reported that 49 miners died in the first nine months of 2009, 37 of whom were working for subcontracting companies. In Turkey, thousands of young migrants who work in jeans factories are likely to develop silicosis, following exposure to high levels of silica during the denim sandblasting process. Forty-four workers have already died this year and 550 have so far been diagnosed with the disease.
Unions and decent work make work safer. Insecure contract and agency labour can and does injure workers.
Zambia’s Labour Minister Decries Labour Casualisation at MUZ Conference
The Zambian Labour and Social Security Minister, Austin Liato, has publically criticised some employers for using temporary workers to fill traditionally permanent positions simply to evade paying statutory employment benefits to workers. Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Mineworkers Union of Zambia’s (MUZ) 12th quadrennial conference on 27 April, Mr. Liato said this trend is found not only in the mining industry but other sectors as well.
MP Austin Liato
Mr. Liato said that despite the Government’s commitment to halt the casualisation of employment, the situation has not improved. "The Government has always led a campaign against casualisation. This state of affairs can't be allowed to continue and I urge labour leaders to be vigilant. We should not turn permanent jobs to temporary jobs," he said.
IUF Urges UN Special Representative to Probe Precarious Work
The Global Union Federation representing workers in the food, agriculture, and services sector, the International Union of Food and Allied Workers’ Association (IUF), has written to John Ruggie, UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, requesting that the relationship between precarious work and the effective realisation of human rights be incorporated into his investigations and recommendations as a matter of priority.
In June 2008, Ruggie proposed a policy framework which was unanimously welcomed by the Human Rights Council. The "Protect, Respect, Remedy" framework is made up of three pillars: the state duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, by avoiding infringing on the rights of others; and greater access by victims to effective remedy, judicial and non-judicial.
John Ruggie
In preparing to make operational the framework, Ruggie is currently consulting with a wide range of actors, including through an online consultation forum, that can be found here, the forum for which the IUF used for its submission.
In that submission, the IUF argues that a meaningful investigation of the relationship between business and human rights must address how the degeneration of traditional employment relationships has impacted on workers’ human rights. Non-traditional forms of working arrangements, such as agency work, contract work and bogus self-employment, are being used to undermine trade union organising and bargaining. Says the IUF, this is a “fundamental human rights issue demanding a strong response rooted in a comprehensive human rights framework.”
The IUF draw attention to the ILO’s 2008 report on industrial relations at Coca-Cola’s Colombia bottlers, which found that the company was systematically denying and restricting the ability to join a union by outsourcing many core jobs. In order to redress this and ensure that workers are capable of fully exercising their rights the global union calls for urgent, systematic action by governments and business to restrict the use of precarious work.
European Metalworkers’ Second Common Demand for more secure employment
As part of its strategy to improve working and living conditions for metalworkers in Europe, the European Metalworkers’ Federation (EMF) has adopted a coordinated collective bargaining policy.
The first coordinated, or common, demand was adopted in 2005 and called for the individual right to training, guaranteed by collective agreements. Last November, at the 6th EMF Collective Bargaining Conference, the 75 unions affiliated to the EMF agreed on a second common demand "for more secure employment - against precarious work."
EMF Deputy General Secretary Bart Samyn
“The last years have seen an incredible increase of precarious work and the number of insecure jobs has exploded in all European countries,” said EMF Deputy General Secretary Bart Samyn. “Everyone agrees that we can no longer deny this very real problem. Hence, the importance of this second common demand of the EMF and the willingness of all EMF affiliates to put the fight against precarious work central in their demands, in their upcoming collective bargaining rounds all over Europe.”
EMF affiliates are developing specific demands, relevant to their national situation, on temporary agency workers (TAW), workers employed on fixed term contracts, the bogus self-employed, and those on projects-based and zero-hour contracts, and are including these demands in their collective bargaining. A number of EMF affiliates have also initiated awareness-raising campaigns for more secure employment.
The EMF Second Common Demand brochure is available here.
Contract and Agency Labour … and Stress
Lacking job security and decent working conditions creates a great deal of stress, particularly in people who are struggling to support a family. Medical researchers discovered, in the 1930s, that stress by itself could produce physical effects. Since then, there has been an ongoing effort to better understand the stress response.
The strict scientific definition of stress is "any stimulus, or group of stimuli, that provokes a physiological or psychological response." A more useful definition of stress in the work context might be "conditions that exceed a person's normal coping capacity." In occupational health, we are particularly concerned with the stressful effects on workers of conditions in the workplace.
What are the negative effects of excessive stress on health - and by health, we mean all aspects of physical, mental, and social well-being?
The symptoms of stress are generally thought to arise from the "fight or flight response." In our evolutionary history, human beings were adapted to respond to a threat by preparing to either fight, give chase, or run away. The body instinctively reacts in certain ways designed to prepare itself for a sudden, short-term, all-out effort to survive.
At first, the sense heightens, blood pressure goes up, heart rate accelerates, respiration increases, blood flow to the muscles is increase, muscles tense, and the digestive system shuts down. Your body temperature may change, provoking sweating. In our evolutionary past, these responses prepared you mentally and physically to meet a threat that would be resolved, for better or for worse, within a few minutes.
The problem in modern terms is that our bodies seem unable to distinguish between the "threat" posed by a cave-bear, a bullying boss, or perpetual fear of job loss. The fight-or-flight response, maintained or repeated too often, results in chronic or long-term damage. These can include hypertension and cardiovascular disease, ulcers, colitis, compromised immune systems, headaches, and psychological changes.
To further complicate things, different people respond to chronic stress in different ways and with different symptoms. Faced with the same workplace stressors, Jane may experience diseases of her digestive system while John may develop high blood pressure. These inconsistent symptoms have made it very difficult to get stress symptoms recognized as a legitimate occupational disease.
All working people experience some degree of career stress; but workers who toiled under Contract and Agency Labour (CAL), who lack even minimal job security and often work for lower wages and in poorer conditions than their full-time counterparts, experience much more. Career stress should be thought of as adding to all the other stresses caused by every aspect of a person's life.
To control stress in the workplace, the same hierarchy of controls that are considered in the control of any other hazard should be used. Control the hazard at the source, if possible; failing that, control the hazard before it reaches the worker (along the exposure path); and as a last resort, control the hazard at the worker.
CAL workers have less scope to seek these controls. They may be subjected to heavy work demands, a poor workplace environment, harassment or bullying, shift work, role uncertainty, a lack of training, unrealistic expectations, lack of input or control over the work, poor ergonomic factors, a high degree of scrutiny or monitoring, and of course job insecurity. Stress at work can have a synergistic effect on stress away from work, capable both of exacerbating and being exacerbated by: family problems, financial problems, sleep and fatigue problems, financial problems, and a feeling of powerlessness and low self worth.
Unlike full-time workers, who often experience a level of loyalty to their employer and their work, CAL workers can feel less commitment. In the long term, this can increase the risk of burn-out. Job performance will come to consist of doing just enough to get by, and this can spill over into personal life as the burned out worker fails to look after their own health, relationships, and families.
Stress is not a trivial condition that can be dealt with simply by willing it away. It is a serious problem, and a proven cause of a wide range of medical conditions
Control of the hazard at the source, would in this case mean the conversion of contract and agency jobs to secure, decent work.
Contract and Agency Labour can and does make workers sick.
Report on Abusive Treatment of Agency Workers in the UK
The UK Equality and Human Rights Commission recently published the damning results of an inquiry into the recruitment and treatment of agency workers in the meat and poultry processing sector in England and Wales.
Although the investigation focused exclusively on the meat and poultry industry, it was said that “...the Commission has no evidence to suggest that supply chain practices in the meat processing sector are more detrimental to workers than in any other sector that makes significant use of low-paid, agency migrant labour.”
The Commission found evidence of widespread poor treatment of agency workers, especially among those who are migrants or who are pregnant, both by agencies and by user enterprises. In particular, the Commission found evidence of practices that contravene legal requirements, ethical trading standards, and basic human rights. Other types of treatment were described as being “an affront to dignity.”
One-third of agencies told the investigators that they had acted unlawfully by recruiting workers of particular nationalities, by giving preference to candidates with particular nationalities they judged the user firm would prefer, or by discriminating against certain nationalities at the direct request of the user firm.
While flexibility is often cited as being an advantage of agency work by the industry, only two workers cited the flexibility of agency work as a positive aspect. Almost all workers said they would prefer permanent work due to the security and rights it offers. More than 80% of the interviewees said that agency workers were treated worse than permanent workers in every aspect of their job. The agency workers said they received poorer pay, were allocated the worst jobs, and were treated like inferiors. Not a single interviewee thought that agency workers were treated better than their permanent counterparts.
Workers reported being refused toilet breaks, and enduring physical and verbal abuse. Concerns about health and safety were raised in over half the interviews, and many interviewees expressed concern that their personal protective equipment was poor quality, ill fitting, shared with other workers, or missing altogether.
The Commission found that abusive treatment was less common in organised factories, and said that “In workplaces where unions are recognised, or have a strong presence, we found that they provide a significant degree of protection for workers.” However, some workers reported that their right to Freedom of Association had been restricted and reported instances where hostility of companies towards union activities discouraged people from joining a union for fear of retribution.
The report concludes with a set of recommendations to key bodies in the industry to “encourage a systematic change in behaviour,” and improve the operations of the Gangmaster Licensing Authority (GLA). Although outside of its remit, the Commission said “...that there is a case for broadening the GLA’s remit to include other sectors where low-paid agency workers are at risk of exploitation” and urged the government to positively consider this proposal.
Commenting on the findings, Nicola Smith, Senior Policy Officer at the UK’s Trades Union Congress (TUC), said, “This strongly evidenced based report demonstrates the scale of mistreatment that continues across low paid industries, where temporary workers with insecure employment status face some of the greatest risks. The TUC remains concerned that such exploitative practices are not confined to the meat processing sector.”
New CAL Facts and Figures Overview
Making available a significant number of key statistics, including the ICEM’s own, as well as a wide range of “best practice examples,” the ICEM issued a new comprehensive presentation on “CAL and the ICEM CAL campaign.” Slide by slide, this education tool provides information on the ICEM’s national and international CAL work, highlighting, among many other items, what unions around the world are doing in their daily struggles against precarious work. The presentation can be found here.
The statistics indicate that the phenomenon of short-term, contract, agency and other precarious work is still growing in almost every part of the world. On the other hand, there also is progress being made. In a lot of countries, for example, laws have been changed for the better. In other cases, unions managed to gain improvements for precarious workers through successful collective bargaining. Trade unions are also increasingly looking towards their own structures and strategies, aiming to better protect and defend often non-affiliated CAL workers.