FCSA broadly welcomes the suggested amendments to legislation which are proposed alongside the consultation.
These proposals would go some way to bring the legislation up-to-date with modern working practices and apply a degree of fairness and common-sense to ways of working which the current legislation did not foresee.
Employment businesses in the temporary labour market often engage umbrella company service providers which, in turn, engage with workers, normally as employers, and to ensure that workers are not only paid, with tax and other deductions accurately calculated, but also receive employment rights and protections in accordance with UK legislation. These rights include the entitlement to paid holiday, as embedded in the Working Time Regulations (WTR).
However, it is FCSA’s view that the proposals could usefully be extended to ensure that temporary or agency workers are not unintentionally disadvantaged by the WTR regarding holiday entitlement when working via an umbrella company.
It should be noted that organisations often engage with employment businesses or umbrella providers rather than employing temporary workers directly, and therefore the proposed changes will be useful to the entire supply chain.
