The Government has been again accused of blocking an EU directive designed to protect the rights of temporary agency workers.
Speaking after today's EU Employment Council in Brussels, MEP Proinsias De Rossa said the Government's continued opposition to the draft EU was "an absolute disgrace".
"The draft Temporary Agency Workers directive would guarantee temporary staff working with a firm to which they have been assigned by an agency the same work-place rights as equivalent workers on permanent and fixed-term contracts in the host firm," he said.
Proinsias De Rossa MEP
"The directive was approved by MEPs in November 2002 but has been blocked at the Council of Employment Ministers for the past five years, primarily by Ireland and the UK. They continued to do so today."
Mr De Rossa said the directive is "an essential piece of legislation" to create a level playing field for workers and for "decent employers".
"Almost all the scandals about the exploitation of vulnerable workers that have emerged over recent years have involved employment agencies," he added.
It would, he said, ensure that "rogue employers" would not be able to use the lack of legal protection for agency workers to circumvent employment protection by replacing permanent staff with agency workers.
"It would also protect responsible employment agencies from unfair competition from cowboy operations."
Mr De Rossa estimated that there are at least 30,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 temps working through roughly 500 employment agencies in Ireland.
"The Government is already reneging on a solemn commitment to the social partners to introduce national legislation protecting temporary agency workers. They clearly are intent to allow the loopholes that exist in irish law which are encouraging unscrupulous employers to depress wages and conditions, thereby making it difficult for others to maintain decent working standards."
The MEP said today's move would undermine the confidence of working people in the EU's capacity to protect them from a "race to the bottom" and would make it harder for those supporting the Lisbon Treaty on reform of the union to persuade workers to vote for it.
Siptu general president Jack O'Connor said last month the importance of the agency workers issue could not be overstated.
"Every syllable of employment protection legislation ever enacted in this country is being circumvented and rendered useless by unscrupulous employers who see the use of labour agencies as the most effective means of exploitation since the abolition of the slave trade 200 years ago," he said.