Documents from Catelene Paaschier of the ETUC
Dear colleagues,

Please find attached the Slovenian presidency proposal concerning agency work (clean version) and my comments on the detail, which I have put in the text in red for easy understanding.

We do accept the general approach taken especially on article 5.4 (which is the proposal to accommodate to the UK agreement between CBI and TUC by allowing derogation also by an agreement between the social partners at national level), but do have some proposals for clarification and improvement (see attached).

The important points (which the UK may put pressure on) to avoid at all costs are:

- the introduction in article 5.3 of ‘other agreements than collective agreements’ that can derogate from equal treatment
(the UK under the pressure of the CBI seems to pursue yet another ‘flexibility’ which is the recognition of any other kind of unregulated an unprotected agreement (mostly without union involvement), such as ‘workforce agreements’, to derogate from equal treatment’.
This is clearly not meant by the agreement between CBI and TUC, and should not be accepted.

- defining in the Directive itself the concept of basic employment and working conditions as not including occupational social security. The UK can (and did), on the basis of its national agreement, decide not to include occupational social security in the equal treatment concept, on the basis of its possibility to derogate in article 5.4. But there is no good reason to make it a general principle in the Directive that occupational social security is not covered under the equal pay/equal treatment principle. This would be especially problematic in countries where occupational social security for agency workers within the agency itself is not (yet) developed. In those countries in which this has developed, also the mechanisms for derogations exist.

Please try to explain these matters to your government, and keep me informed about any relevant development at national level.