The Agency worker regulation (2011) does not specify a maximum or minimum number of weeks to fulfil the monitoring requirements for agency workers. It does specifically state that such monitoring is a joint responsibility of both agency and hirer.
At a minimum an agency worker who works 12 weeks continuously from Oct 1st 2011 will legal parity of employment conditions with the equivalent substantive employees. The 12 weeks can be referred to or thought of as a 12 week clock.
This 12 week period can (and under the existing legislation does) stretch for a number of reasons:
Its possible to interpret the act so that if a worker has a
contract with an agency whereby they are entitled to receive
statutory maternity, paternity or adoption leave and the worker
enters the protected period for pregnancy at the start of
pregnancy, the situation could arise where a worker works only for
a week (or even a day) at a hirer and then achieves equality of
employment 11 weeks later whilst still on leave.
We have this and a number of other questions for clarification in
correspondence with the Department of Business and Innovation
(etc). The will be published here.
If you have a query then please forward it to us. If we can answer
it we will put it in a further article. If we need clarification
then we will add it to our existing dialog with the Department of
Business and Innovation (etc).
We have a number of questions with the Department of Business and innovation relating to clarification on the AWR. The answers when they come will be published in this section of our site.
The AWR has been updated, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011/1941/made
We have received clarification (amongst other things, on the order in which certain conflicting provisos should be applied). These changes will be incorporated in our end of September release.
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