A European Court of Justice ruling has supported the UK recruitment industry’s stance against the Agency Workers Directive (AWD) and its equal pay for temps clause.

According to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), the case is directly relevant to the fight against the directive proposed by the European Commission, which calls for equal pay and benefits for temps after their first six weeks in employment.

The recent judgement in the Wippel v Peek and Cloppenburg GmbH & Co case confirmed the difficulties of comparing temps with permanent employees.

The case in question concerned the interpretation of the equal treatment directive and how it applied to a female part-time worker, who was employed to work on demand with a zero-hours contract and no fixed salary.

She had argued that the absence from her contract of an agreement on working hours was indirectly discriminatory because the vast majority of workers in her situation were women.

Discussions focused on whether the applicant’s contract led to her being treated less favourably than a full-time worker.

But the court ruled that because the applicant could refuse work offered by her employer while a full-time worker could not, the two employment relationships were too different to be deemed comparable. This meant that there could be no question of sex discrimination.

An REC spokesman said: “The case confirms that it is impossible to adequately compare temporary workers with permanent employees.

“This goes to the very heart of our argument against the current draft of the Agency Workers Directive.”