No Deal for Recruiters

This week’s announcement that agency workers will be given the same employment rights as permanent staff after 12 weeks was a desperate blow for the UK Recruitment Industry; which has been fighting for a 12 month derogation period (or a worst case scenario of six months) for the last seven years. The Trade Unions, in a similarly arrogant position, demanded equality from Day One and secretly eluded to a more realistic expectation of 12 weeks. So who’s the winner here I ask myself?

In a week where the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, was given a public dressing down by Jan Berry, the passionate Chair of the Police Federation, for betraying the honest Copper, I hope the Chair of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation will take a similarly forthright stance and remind John Hutton and Pat McFadden at BERR that they have equally failed the UK’s 1.3 million temporary workers, the 11,000 agencies that place them and the 3.2 million businesses that are dependant upon them to manage their constantly fluctuating staffing needs. And not just leave it to the staff at the REC. Watch this space!

At a time when the Government needs to hold its nerve if the economy is to remain stable (or at least stable-ish), I am not comforted by this apparent appeasement of the Unions and worse, the French! (My earlier pieces refer).

This has been a bad week for recruitment. Not because we can’t accept this new imposition, not because we won’t again have to pick up the tab and not even because it will directly cause the loss of temporary assignments but principally because it will bring even more red tape, bureaucracy and process to an already over regulated and under policed industry and one that is being driven into the ground by a lack of appreciation.

Sometimes I feel like the last Giant Panda saying “They’ll miss me when I’ve gone.”

RIP Recruitment.

Gareth