The Terms of Employment (Information) Act, 1994, sets down that employment agencies along with other employers must provide their employees, who are normally expected to work for not less than eight hours per week and who have been in continuous service for at least one month, with a written statement setting out certain particulars of the employee's terms of employment (the Act provides that the party who is liable to pay the wages of an individual, whether the employment agency or a client company, is deemed to be the employer for the purposes of the Act and is obliged to provide the written statement).
The written statement must contain terms and conditions, as specified in the Act. These include the rate or method of calculation of the employee's remuneration, hours of work, including overtime, and paid leave entitlements. An employer is generally not required to provide payment for sick leave unless by agreement. The written statement must be provided by the employer within two months of the date of commencement of employment. I have no immediate plans to introduce legislation to alter this requirement.
As regards enforcement, an employee may present a complaint to a rights commissioner if it appears that his-her employer has failed to provide a full and accurate written statement of the terms of employment. The rights commissioner will issue a written recommendation which may be appealed to the Employment Appeals Tribunal. Where the employer has neither appealed nor implemented the rights commissioner's recommendation, the employee may refer the complaint to the Employment Appeals Tribunal which will issue a determination without hearing the case and will confirm the recommendation in its determination. In situations where employers do not implement a determination of the tribunal favourable to the employee, there is provision for the employee to refer the matter to the employment rights section of my Department for enforcement through the District Court.
In the year to date, 123 complaints in all have been referred to the rights commissioner's service, of which five recommendations have been appealed to the Employment Appeals Tribunal – these statistics do not specifically identify cases where the employer was an employment agency.
In the above circumstances, employment agency workers have the same rights of complaint as other workers and as such are not particularly vulnerable in this respect. As regards low pay, the Government is committed to the introduction of a national minimum hourly wage from April 2000.
