Dodgy Jobs & Precarious Employment

by Brian Bamford

AT the 5th Policy Conference of the Unite union last July, two motions were carried calling for campaigns to 'ensure that all workers employed on temporary, permanent, or fixed term contracts or through agencies should have their rights and protections from the first day of employment...'

These policy changes followed an incident at Bury MBC's waste depot at Bradley Fold last February*, in which an agency worker querying his own rights and status with the manager ended up in a altercation in which the manager got a black eye.  That agency worker had done 8-years on the bins in insecure employment; a binman at Rochdale MBC, we learn, had done 15-years in the same situation.

Other workers on the bins at the Bury Depot, believed that there was a cover-up about who struck the first blow.  The matter was reported to the police but later dropped.

Concern a year ago was triggered by the liquidation of Carillion in January, but after the dramatic event at Bradley Fold the Bury Unite Commercial Branch accused the Union of 'being asleep at the wheel'. 

Since the Bury Unite Branch issued a series of Freedom of Information requests about the goings on in Bury MBC with regard to agency workers, the bosses have started taking on staff on 6-month temporary contracts.   The worry is that the though the permanent staff on the bins in Bury are mainly in the union few, if any, of these temporary workers are.

What is now being demanded by the Unite union now is to establish that if a worker is under the control or direction of a company like Bury MBC, then that worker will be deemed to be an employee and enjoy all the rights that status infers.

Read more:  
* northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2018/09/lovely-black-eyes-agency-workers.htm

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