THE treatment of the agency workers laid-off by BMW is nothing short of a disgrace.
This Labour Government should hang its head in shame for being responsible for their plight, by its lack of support for MP Andrew Miller’s Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill, which would have given all the workers the same employment rights.
The EU was considering changes to employment law concerning agency workers until Tony Blair’s government opposed any changes to workers’ terms and conditions of employment to make them comparable to workers who have permanent contracts.
Because of Blair’s intervention, the revision then became bogged down in Europe.
Under European Law, Labour has to make changes by 2011, but has been dragging its feet once again. The price is being paid for by the working class.
The only progress that appears to have been made was more than a year ago, when Andrew Miller’s private member’s bill received its first reading on February 22, 2008.
Oxford East MP Andrew Smith, among others, sponsored this bill, but I believe it has not moved beyond the first reading.
Is it any wonder that workers are taking industrial action across the country, such as the Lindsay oil refinery workers a few weeks ago, in trying to protect their jobs?
Perhaps if the Cowley workforce and unions had been less compliant with the wishes of BMW management in the past, fewer jobs would have been lost there.
The worry now must be ‘who next?’. BMW contracted staff?
Let’s hope not.
DAVE ROBINSON, Meaden Hill, Headington, Oxford
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