21 August, 2009IG Metall calls on government to ensure a return to secure employment practices and an end to the misuse of agency labour.
GERMANY: IG Metall called on political leaders on August 19 to ensure that priority is given to employment in secure, regular employment as the economy recovers and that use of agency labour is limited and based on equal pay for equal work.
The union's demands were also backed up by the results of a study, released on the same day, which found that enterprises are increasingly using agency labour in order to pass on business risks to workers.
The study, "Changes in the use of agency labour", was conducted by the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena and looked at how enterprises are using agency labour and what it means for the workers. It found that agency labour is increasingly being used more strategically by enterprises as a way of passing on the business risk of the cost of longer-term employment and as a potential means of threatening the job security of permanent staff.
Both IG Metall Vice President Detlef Wetzel and Klaus Dörre, the director of the research team, warned that it is likely that the use of agency labour will increase even further in the next upswing of the economy.
"It is high time to create better conditions for agency workers," said Wetzel. "We are demanding that use of agency labour be limited and the best way to ensure this is on the principle of equal pay for equal work, thereby also improving the conditions of employment for agency workers," said Wetzel.
Wetzel also made demands for stronger co-determination rights with regard to agency workers and said IG Metall will continue to take up the issue in collective bargaining agreements concluded by the union.
Figures released by the Federal Office of Statistics on the same day show that the number of people in Germany employed in regular, secure jobs with social benefits and working more than 20 hours a week has fallen in the last ten years. In 2008, 66 per cent of all employed people had regular employment, where as ten years earlier the rate was at 72.6 per cent.
For further information and a copy of the study (in German) go to: http://www.igmetall.de/cps/rde/xchg/SID-0A456501-49F21D63/internet/style.xsl/view_1779.htm