Ed Miliband will block cheap foreign staff loophole...

[dutchman]

Labour leader issues his first major policy pledge of 2014 - to prevent low-paid overseas agency staff undercutting UK jobseekers



A Labour government will clamp down on British businesses using cheap foreign labour, Ed Miliband will pledge today, as he gives a warning that the arrival of migrant workers from Romania and Bulgaria could make the cost of living crisis worse for Britons.

If Labour wins in 2015, the Government would work with businesses to close a European Union loophole which allows companies to undercut staff legally by paying agency workers lower wages. The loophole has allowed major firms in the food, packaging and call-centre sectors to employ workers, often from abroad, on lower rates. While the loophole is legal, companies who use it have been accused of acting unscrupulously by failing to protect the job security of their staff.

Writing in The Independent on Sunday, the Labour leader says it is right to address "understandable" fears about immigration, while maintaining Britain's position as a country that "reaches outwards to the world". Addressing "anxiety" about immigration means changing a British economy "hard-wired into a cycle of low wages, low skills, insecure jobs and high prices that is tearing into the living standards of ordinary families", he says, rather than erecting a "fortress" around Britain.

In 2011, the EU Agency Workers Directive was introduced granting rights for equal pay and conditions for agency staff across Europe. But under a loophole known as the "Swedish derogation", negotiated by the Stockholm government because Sweden relies heavily on agency staff, companies anywhere in the EU have been able to employ agency workers on cheaper rates.

Mr Miliband promises that a Labour government would end the practice by amending the way the directive and its clauses are interpreted in the UK. Figures show that about 300,000 workers in Britain, many of whom are from overseas, are paid below the minimum wage."