Phased auto-enrolment could distort recruitment market, warn agencies
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The Recruitment and Employment Confederation is calling for the Government to set a common date for all agency workers to be auto-enrolled into a qualifying scheme or risk distorting the recruitment market.
The representative body for recruitment agencies is also calling for an extension to the 19 day rule which will delay the period at which the agency will have to pass contributions to the pension scheme.
The REC wants to see the Pensions Regulator co-operating with other Government agencies such as HMRC, the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and the BIS Employment Agency Standards inspectorate to enforce the regulations effectively.
The body is also calling for clarity over why records need to be kept for six years when the Pensions Regulator can only make investigations going back 12 months.
REC head of public policy Anne Fairweather says: “The current proposals are to introduce the requirement to automatically enrol workers by payroll size over three years from 2012. This risks creating significant distortions in the recruitment market.
“It will be confusing for workers who may work through several recruitment agencies at the same time and experience varying automatic enrolment dates. It will also create difficulties in the procurement supply chain for recruitment agencies where second tier suppliers provide staff via master or neutral vendors.
“In order to reduce the administrative burden and ensure there is a level playing field between agencies, the REC is calling for the automatic enrolment measures to be applied to the temporary staffing sector at the same time.”
Fairweather says the impact of auto-enrolment on agencies and temporary workers has not been properly thought through.
She says: “The REC believes that the practical application of the automatic enrolment regulations to the temporary agency work market were not properly considered before or during the passage of the Pensions Act 2008; and it is only now that these issues are being given due consideration.
“This is of great concern as the specificities of the agency work market make the automatic enrolment procedures particularly burdensome on REC members.”
