Temporary Agency Workers in Italy and the UK by Alessio Bertolini

Author:Alessio Bertolini
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030401924
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Apart from the uncertainty related to contract renewals, the fact that when a contract expired the unused accrued annual leave was paid directly into the last payslip, meant for most people the inability to enjoy any paid time off sometimes for long periods, even when they had been working in the same job for several months.

Furthermore, in both countries, this issue was further complicated by commonplace practices in many workplaces which openly discriminated against TA workers and other atypical workers vis-à-vis regular employees. These practices mainly entailed that permanent employees were given priority in choosing when to go on annual leave, with the usual limitations related to the hirer’s needs, while TA workers could only be allocated the remaining available slots. ‘When they decide the holidays , first they let the [regular] employees decide the holidays , then there are the TA workers and the others’ (Francesca, 41). ‘They let the permanent ones decide first, that’s how it goes’ (Lilian, 45). This left TA workers and other atypical workers with limited choice on when to take time off and having those choices subordinated to the ones made by standard employees. This was perceived as a form of outright discrimination against atypical workers, whose formal right to equal treatment with regard to annual leave was not respected in practice.

In conclusion, initial hypotheses from the dualism literature which expected a lack of disadvantage in working time given equal treatment rules were confirmed in the workers’ experience for all aspects of working time but annual leave. With respect to the latter, in both countries, being a TA worker presented profound disadvantages compared to standard workers. Although the legislative framework formally guarantees equal treatment in working time after 12 weeks in the UK and from the start of the contract in Italy, the experience of TA workers presented a different picture. On the one hand, the intrinsic uncertainty related to job duration and contract renewal contributed to more limited possibilities to take time off compared to permanent employees. On the other hand, common discrimination practices at the workplace, which went against rules of equal treatment, created a divide between TA workers and standard employees, further reducing the ability to take time off and restricting the TA workers’ freedom to choose when to take leave. Hence it can be argued that although no divide or a temporary one was identified in the analysis of institutional characteristics, the experience of the interviewees showed that practices in the workplaces went against the principle of equal treatment established by law, engendering a disadvantage for TA workers in the ability to take annual leave.

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