The TUC’s proposal that agency workers should be included in government legislation on fixed-term contracts would lead to excessive bureaucracy for recruitment agencies, the REC has claimed.

A report issued by the TUC last month urged the government to include agency and fixed-term workers regulations within an employment bill that will be laid before parliament this autumn.

But REC head of legal services Fiona Coombe said the TUC’s proposals were unworkable.

She said: ‘These proposals would mean agencies would be swamped with paperwork - agency workers will be dealt with in a forthcoming EU directive anyway.’

According to the TUC’s proposals, agency workers should be compared with a permanent worker doing the same job in the same workplace.

When no such worker exists, the TUC wants agency workers to be compared with a hypothetical comparator worker in the same industry, whose terms and conditions would be established by collective bargaining.

The REC criticised the claims, saying that in many cases it would be very difficult to establish with whom temporary workers should be compared because, in any given workplace, different employees in the same job will receive different pay levels according to performance and other factors.

Agency workers will also have rights under the government’s new agency workers act, the REC said.

Lucy Anderson, senior policy officer in the TUC’s equal rights department, said: ‘There is no reason why we can’t provide for agency work in advance of a European directive. If bad employers want to avoid giving temporary workers equal treatment, they could still use agencies to get round the regulations.’