The Siptu trade union has called for legislation to protect the employment rights of agency workers and said it wants to 'tease out' protection for this group in the next round of social partnership negotiations.
Speaking at a meeting today, Siptu general president Jack O'Connor said the union was campaigning for the principle of equality of treatment for the estimated 125,000 agency workers now recruited in Ireland - many on an ad hoc basis and without legal protection.
Mr O'Connor said the abuse of agency workers in Ireland - the world's third most prosperous economy - was "growing like a cancer" with 520 recruitment agencies now operating in this country and claimed the rate of people being employed on an agency basis was increasing exponentially.
Numerous agency workers present at the Siptu campaign today explained how they had been affected by lack of employment rights and gave testimonies of a litany of abuses including unfair dismissal, threats of sacking, reductions in wages and lack of redundancy provision.
Agency worker Conor O'Gorman said: "Agencies treat people like we're a number, not people."
Mr O'Gorman said his experience was of being treated as a casual worker without the legal protection of contracted 'casualisation'. "What's happening now is like what was stamped out by Larkin nearly 100 years ago," he said.
Mr O'Connor said the many agencies working on a legitimate basis were not at risk from the union's call for legislation.
"They have absolutely nothing to fear," he said, and claimed such businesses would gain financially once unethical agencies were brought under control.
Mr O'Connor said a new underclass of people with "absolutely no workplace rights at all" was developing in Ireland.
He added: "The practice is growing like a cancer in our economy, across the services sector and into manufacturing, as well as construction."
He said Siptu was "fighting for the principle of equality of treatment for all workers doing the same work for the same employer in the way that it applies in most developed EU economies".
Labour MEP Proinsias De Rossa will tell a conference on workers' rights in Dublin tonight that the government commitment to introduce legislation to protect the pay and conditions of those working for temporary-work agencies must be introduced as a matter of urgency.
"There is a minimum of 30,000 such workers in Ireland at present, which are not adequately protected by Irish or European law," he will tell the Siptu-organised event.
Mr De Rossa said the European Foundation for Living and Working Conditions has found that compared to all other forms of employment that temporary agency-work has the worst record with regard to working conditions.