Query about my employment rights

Hi William,

I think your entitlement to company perks will depend on whether the perks form park of the terms and conditions that are "ordinarily included in the contracts of employees". The relevant part of the AWR will be:

an agency worker (A) shall be entitled to the same basic working and employment conditions as A would be entitled to for doing the same job had A been recruited by the hirer
Paragraph (1) shall be deemed to have been complied with where—

(a)an agency worker is working under the same relevant terms and conditions as an employee who is a comparable employee, and
(b)the relevant terms and conditions of that comparable employee are terms and conditions ordinarily included in the contracts of employees, who are comparable employees of the hirer, whether by collective agreement or otherwise.

I'm not an expert on this, so happy to be corrected.

Hi William,

I think your entitlement to company perks will depend on whether the perks form park of the terms and conditions that are "ordinarily included in the contracts of employees". The relevant part of the AWR will be:

an agency worker (A) shall be entitled to the same basic working and employment conditions as A would be entitled to for doing the same job had A been recruited by the hirer
Paragraph (1) shall be deemed to have been complied with where—

(a)an agency worker is working under the same relevant terms and conditions as an employee who is a comparable employee, and
(b)the relevant terms and conditions of that comparable employee are terms and conditions ordinarily included in the contracts of employees, who are comparable employees of the hirer, whether by collective agreement or otherwise.

I'm not an expert on this, so happy to be corrected.

See too

www.cipd.co.uk/.../equal-treatment-for-agency-workers_2010__7__tcm18-10716.pdf

Thanks very much, David - that's very helpful. I'm very new to this - not current working in HR and just started a CIPD certificate a few weeks ago. Very keen to learn from everyone here. The forums here are very help.
Best wishes
Daron

Daron, you may also find it useful to read the full guidance notes issued by the governement in 2011.

On page 29 of this zipped PDF file you'll find a complete list of all the elements that are explicity excluded

Thanks all. I agree from the link provided it seems I wouldn't be covered albeit more as a technical point - I suppose a good employer would include me in the perks (given we are not awash with agency workers) but they're not obliged to. While things like local discounts and voucher schemes do amount to a financial incentive I don't think they are direct enough to be covered by the scope of entitlement.

To be honest William, I think most employers would not want to extend ALL employee perks to agency workers, simply because if an option arises to recruit them directly there will be little or no advantage to the agency worker in becoming an employee.....

Yes that may be true in some cases, but working in a professional environment like HR the main advantage would be getting a permanent role! I get what you are saying if for environments such as warehouses or manufacturing where there may be a lot of agency workers, some of whom get taken on as employees later. For me on a long term FTC I am obviously looking for other roles because it can take a long time to find something suitable and I don't think there is prospect of being kept on permanently anyway.