The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has said new legislation is required to ensure recruitment agencies are not used by employers to circumvent equality provisions in employment law and that agency workers are not treated as second-class citizens.
It said that Ireland, the UK and Hungary were the only three EU member states that did not legislate for equal treatment of agency workers. This meant it was perfectly legal for such workers to be paid less and have worse conditions than permanent employees.
It said a survey it had carried out had found most jobseekers believed some recruitment agencies practised discrimination "by not sending certain candidates forward for interview".
Ictu legislation and social affairs officer Esther Lynch said the increasing use of agency workers in Ireland was aiding the creation of a legally sanctioned two-tier workforce.
"Congress has received numerous complaints which highlight suspicions that some recruitment agencies are being utilised by some employers for equality avoidance - in other words to circumvent equality provisions of employment law. Our survey of jobseekers reinforces this, highlighting the strong belief that some agencies will filter out certain candidates during the selection process.
"According to the survey, those most likely to suffer such a fate would be pregnant women, older people, those with children, or someone with a disability - even where that disability has no impact on their ability to do the job in question," Ms Lynch said.
Brendan McGinty, director of industrial relations with the employers' group Ibec, said there were already commitments governing recruitment agencies in the Towards 2016 national agreement. "We have been over this ground and it is not helpful for the trade union movement to be further raising issues which have already been dealt with in Towards 2016," he said.
