Agency workers claim they have been ‘cheated’ out of pay rises, despite often carrying out exactly the same jobs as their permanent staff colleagues. By our Town Hall reporter, KEN LEE
Broken time payments: agency staff claim that the council has broken employment law over pay rises and unpaid Christmas leave arrangement
Scrooge-like Croydon Council is taking the Ho, Ho, Ho out of Christmas, and replacing it with big fat Zero, Zero, Zero for hundreds of temporary agency staff, who they have ordered to take unpaid leave over the festive period.
The cash-strapped council has told the temporary staff that it is forcing them to take six days of unpaid leave over Christmas and the New Year to “save money”.
But this comes as a fiercely-contested three-week Employment Tribunal is coming to a close, which could cost the council around £150,000 for the hearing alone as it defends itself against allegations of unfair dismissal and racism. The council has also paid for the defence of its CEO, Katherine Kerswell, who also faced allegations of racism from former executive Hazel Simmonds.
Agency staff have raised their fears about mistreatment over Christmas in an email to Mayor Jason Perry and all Town Hall councillors. Urgent questions have been asked of the council’s human resources department, although the very well-paid head of HR, Scrooge-lookalike Dean Shoesmith, has spent most of the past fortnight logged in to the London South Employment Tribunal’s remote sessions…
The agency workers also claim that they have been denied the annual pay rise that the council has made to permanent staff.
Scrooge lookalike: Dean Shoesmith, Croydon’s head of HR
“Agency staff are really upset with the situation but also feel helpless and powerless,” the agency worker, who has maintained anonymity, said in the email.
“We work just as hard as council employed staff, sometimes harder because we know we are disposable.
“We shouldn’t be in the position of trying to get Croydon Council to give us fair treatment in accordance with the regulations – our rights should be upheld and protected as a matter of course.”
The worker claims that this is not the first year that the council has failed to give agency staff a pay increase even though they are entitled to it under the agency worker regulations, nor the first time they have forced their temporary staff to take a prolonged spell of leave over the Christmas break.
“Croydon Council is breaching the agency workers’ regulation by not giving the annual pay increase to agency staff,” they claim.
“Croydon Council [is] breaching the agency workers’ regulation by forcing agency staff to compulsorily ‘stand down’.”
Croydon Council will be closed on Monday 25 and Tuesday 26 December, when employed staff and agency staff will all be on leave. The council has also instructed employees to take December 27 as (paid) annual leave. This also applies to agency staff, but they will not be paid for this date.
Employed staff will be back at work on Thursday December 28 and Friday December 29, “but agency workers have been told they cannot work on these dates and we won’t be paid either”, the emailer writes.
Employed staff will be working again from Tuesday, January 2 and the rest of that week, “but agency workers have been told they cannot work on these dates and we won’t be paid either”.
This Friday, December 22, will be the last paid work day for Croydon’s agency staff, who won’t get paid work again from the council until Monday, January 8 – a 16-day-long unpaid period.
Agency worker regulations insist that employers of casual staff should treat them in the same manner as employees after they have worked at any organisation for at least 12 weeks – which is the case for many of Croydon’s temporary workers.
“Many agency staff have worked for other councils and have never been forced to take unpaid leave at any point in the year,” the whistleblower says.
“For a lot of us, Christmas is an expensive time of the year and we are being forced to take unpaid leave.
“A number of us have looked into seasonal part-time work just to cover the loss of earnings over that period.
“Some of us agency workers live week-to-week on pay and cannot afford to take the unpaid leave. We have rent and mortgages and bills like everyone else.”
The emailer claims that Croydon’s Bah! Humbug! council has been operating its “Scrooge lay-offs” for several years.
And while the council’s employees this month got a £2,229 pay increase – handily back-dated to April – temporary workers, often doing exactly the jobs as permanent staff alongside them, have been told that they are not entitled to the pay increase.
New temporary and permanent jobs are being advertised by the council at the increased pay rates, which means new directly employed workers and agency workers will be paid more than existing agency workers doing the same job. “This is unfair,” the agency worker says.
“As agency workers, the breach of the regulations is really hard to deal with because if we say anything to the council, we could lose our jobs.”
Some of Croydon’s agency staff have approached ACAS, the employment arbitration service, to seek unpaid back-pay for this and previous Christmases where they have been forced to take unpaid leave.
“Some of us agency staff have worked at Croydon Council for years and have been cheated out of pay that is rightfully ours,” they say.
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SIXTH successive year in 2022 in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
The agency staff being ripped off by Croydon council should contact the stewards of the town hall union, Unison
Is anyone else fed up to the teeth with these thieves? We pay an eye watering tax for nonexistent services, have absolute idiots running the borough further into debt, and a part time mayor on a bloated salary. It’s time we started fighting back
This has a ring of the same type of rhetoric that DEMOC were throwing around 3-4 years ago, ironically.
Perhaps it is about time that those in charge and make unlawful decisions are taken to court or tribunal for that failure and are held individually responsible.
Taking a decision and getting it wrong is not neccessarily wrong or bad, but taking a decision that is known to be against the law or ignoring due diligence intentionally so that guilty knowledge is avoided, displays a cavalier attitude to legislations and a contemptuous attitude to both parliament and the judiciary.
Perhaps something to be looked at by Mr Starmer
I worked as a temp during the 80’s and 90s, often for Croydon Council. I was employed by an agency, and fully understood that I got no guaranteed work, no holiday or sick pay, and was paid at the hourly rate agreed between the agency and me. What the Council paid the agency for me, or how much they paid their employees with whom I worked, were irrelevant. The Council employs too few staff, minimising pension and NI contributions, and makes up the numbers using agencies. If the staff don’t like the working conditions or pay, they need to negotiate with their agencies, the Council isn’t involved. If temps need work while Council activities are suspended over Xmas and New Year, they should ask their agencies to find them work elsewhere, it isn’t up to the Council to give temps work while the Council premises are closed. I am surprised that the people who temp for the Council as I did don’t understand the system. I believe the law has changed since I ceased temping, and staff are now paid holiday and sick pay by their Agencies, but I have no experience of this so maybe some clarification could be provided by the agencies themselves?
These workers have certain legal rights under the Agency Workers Regulations 2010.
Relevant here is that once they have worked at a company for 12 weeks they should get the same basic pay and conditions as if they were hired directly to do the same work as employees.
If an agency worker does not receive this equal treatment they can make a claim in an Employment Tribunal against either their agency or the company or both.
Before doing that, the person concerned should write to their agency that pays them, explain what they think has gone wrong and what they think should be done to put things right. This might be enough to sort things out.
The claim that some agency staff have worked at Croydon Council for years is a worry. Agencies charge companies fees for supplying workers, so potentially the council is paying more than it would have done had they employed these people to begin with. If it has saved money by not giving the agency workers the equal treatment they’re legally entitled to, all that could be about to unravel.
Thank you, Austen, for the up-to-date information. It sounds as if communications between the Council, the agencies and the staff is poor. In my day the agency was paid at least twice as much as I was per hour – easy money if a member of staff keeps on earning that for the agency for a number of years!
It was the case in many local administrations to use temps and fixed term contracts. Many did get paid a lot more, but not as much as one may think. They did not get the Pension, Holiday or other benefits.
Austen does point out the new legislation for Agency workers but there was more to it than that. Agency owners had new regulations they had to comply with and a pressure also from Clients to reduce costs. That reduces salaries for Temps.
More and more had to use Universal credit and that created a cost to the taxpayer thence the regulations.
In all the years of working in public administration and also being a company secretary for an Employment Agency (no conflict as specialist and not supplying public bodies and also very well declared.) I find it surreal that perversely a Public body is indulging in sharp practice that was once the domain of shady agencies.
A bugbear of many reputable agencies was trying to compete on price with those that repeatedly broke laws, regulations and industry standards.
Semmingly despite all the changes the one thing remarkable is that it is not shady agencies doing the dirty on the temps anymore.
Still as my children say ”Dad you have to remove all standards to enable others to meet expectations, this is Croydon, expect nothing and be happy when that expectation is met or exceeded”
Croydon has always treated temps well in my experience. They encourage temps to to apply for permanent jobs as they come up and encourage managers to interview them. It looks expensive to hire a temp, but the savings in pension contributions, sick pay and the rest outweigh the apparent extra cost.
I work for the Council and as December has progressed I have noticed many senior staff working at home for most of the week. Some have been going to nativity plays and shopping in Purley Way while also doing their usual working from home activities of walking the dog and taking and collecting the grandchildren from school.
If anybody is waiting longer than usual for a response that is the reason.
There is meant to be a HR policy on working from home but it is disregarded by senior staff as HR do not monitor it. It does not apply to me in my role or so I am told.
Another good skiving excuse now is suspected Covid. Testing has disappeared so it is a good one that is not challenged by the one remaining manager working at home pretending to be responsible for a whole department.
Woah!!! Risky – hope this isn’t your real name