Temporary Agency Work and Trade Unions in Comparative Perspective

Nadja Doerflinger,Valeria Pulignano

doi:10.1177/2158244015575633

Abstract

The article examines local union approaches toward temporary agency work in Belgium and Germany. Heterogeneous plant-level use of temporary work is explained by differences in collective bargaining, together with representation structures and rights for agency workers. Specifically, within a context providing effective rights for representation, the Belgian unions responded to firms’ economic difficulties by improving the working conditions of agency workers through negotiating plant-level agreements that contributed to fostering equality between agency workers and regular workers. In contrast, agency work became instrumental in safeguarding the core workforce’s employment in the German workplaces, where the representation rights were absent. As a result, the status of agency workers remained vulnerable.

Highlights

Temporary agency work (TAW) is considered to be one of the most vulnerable forms of employment (Fudge, 2011)
TAW represents a challenge for trade unions, research has hardly begun to examine the policies and practices negotiated by employee representatives at the workplace level
According to Olsen (2005), local unions face a dilemma when coping with TAW: should they utilize it to increase the regular workforce’s job security or should they represent a plant’s whole workforce regardless of contractual status? Recent labor market developments point to the second alternative, as the increasing use of flexible work arrangements has contributed to the evolution of a “fragmented landscape of labor relations” (Holst, 2014, p. 3), with traditional core– periphery divides becoming weaker and blurring the borders between the different contractual groups

Summary

Introduction

Temporary agency work (TAW) is considered to be one of the most vulnerable forms of employment (Fudge, 2011). The works council initiated the negotiation to trade off its agreement to the relatively high use of TAW against an employment guarantee for the regular workforce: Our labor agreement secures the permanent jobs at this plant. While the use of TAW increased the core workforce’s security, it contributed to reducing the agency workers’ job stability and worsening their working conditions This became evident during the economic crisis, when agency workers were made redundant as soon as production volumes dropped. Like Car1BE, Car2BE concluded an agreement on employment paths, stating that white-collar employees would be offered permanent employment after one year of fixed-term work, and blue-collar workers no later than after three years In both Belgian workplaces, contracts were upgraded over time based on performance indicators and training activities. This makes it clear that local unionists followed the national union policy

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion