RICHARD RATCLIFF loves his job. The 58-year-old English and religious education teacher works two or three days a week, filling in for absent staff at secondary schools within 20 miles of his home at Snodland, Kent, as directed by his agency, Select Education. The rest of his week is spent gardening or visiting cultural sites. “I’m semi-retired, but this way I get to keep my hand in while avoiding that rat-race element you find in most full-time jobs,” he said. “It’s quite stressful but very fulfilling.”

Bill Hooper’s career is just beginning. Within days of contacting the recruitment agency Manpower, the 26-year-old IT worker started in a temporary position doing electronic file management for Hertfordshire county council. “I needed employment quickly and temporary work let me get my foot in the door,” he said.

After seven months, Hooper is happy. “The only downside is the lack of security, but the longer you are in a position, the more chance there is that it could become a permanent job,” he said. While some agency workers are paid less than their permanent colleagues, both Ratcliff and Hooper receive the going rate.

There are about 1m temporary and contract workers in Britain. Employed and paid by recruitment agencies – of which there are about 17,000 – they fill posts at short notice and take on a variety of temporary placings. One estimate suggests that agency workers contribute £24.8 billion to the nation’s economy each year. The public sector depends on them.

At any one time Hertfordshire county council will have 600-700 agency workers supplied by Manpower to carry out essential roles, from filling temporary IT posts like Hooper’s to covering staff absence in critical areas such as child social work. “They are vital – we couldn’t cover our 24/7 work without them,” said Mary Lowten, business partner resourcing at the county council.

Using an agency has many benefits: the local council does not need to maintain its own bank of back-up staff and can draw on Manpower’s wide pool of expertise at short notice. The agency handles all the paperwork and ensures that its workers are checked, interviewed and referenced. Such screening is an important aspect of agency work. It is a big responsibility in fields such as social work or security, which was under scrutiny last week after it was revealed that illegal immigrants had been given jobs in the public sector, including guarding police and government premises.

Peter Flannery, managing director of Select Education, Britain’s largest teaching agency, said the firms solved problems for their clients by taking on this work and helping them avoid unnecessary costs. “Flexibility is very important,” he said. “Certain schools at certain times of the year wouldn’t be able to operate if it wasn’t for supply teachers and teaching assistants. They provide a very important service.”

The government acknowledges the role the growing industry plays in providing flexibility in Britain’s labour market. Among other things, the employment bill flagged up in the Queen’s speech this month will better protect the most vulnerable agency workers from breaches in existing regulations. The Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate is to get greater investigative powers to pursue complaints, access companies’ financial records and will be able to bring its own prosecutions with unlimited fines for those found wanting. But the bill will do little to change the way temporary employment works.

“Most agencies treat their workers fairly,” said Pat McFadden, minister for employment relations. “These proposals are targeted at those that don’t. In fact, legitimate agencies will benefit from more effective enforcement against illegal activity.”

Tom Hadley, director of external relations at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, described the proposed legislation as a positive step. “It’s important to protect workers as the whole temp model depends on it being a good option,” he said.

He is more concerned with the spectre of pending European legislation – the draft agency workers directive. This would give temporary workers the same pay and benefits as permanent staff after six weeks’ employment. That will mean greater costs, less flexibility and more paperwork, Hadley warned. “It could turn employers off from using temporary workers, and that would have a disproportionate impact in the UK,” he said.

Mike Emmott, employee-relations adviser with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, is equally wary. “The directive’s insistence on equality of treatment would not only completely undermine the temporary market, it would damage the interests of many people who chose temporary worker status,” he said.

However, the Trades Union Congress is lobbying to give agency workers the same rights, pay and working conditions as directly employed staff from the first day of their assignment.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “Agency workers regularly earn less than directly employed staff, are not allowed to benefit from an employer’s contributions to a pension scheme, are given less holiday, little if any access to training, and tend to get no contractual sick pay. Some people, including women and older workers, are always going to prefer to work a series of temporary contracts, but just because they opt for agency work shouldn’t mean they are treated less fairly at work.”

Nevertheless, a study by King’s College London suggests that temporary workers tend to be happier than their permanent counterparts. David Guest, professor of organisational psychology, who carried out the research for the European Union, said this probably reflected the growing pressures on permanent jobs.

“Temporary workers don’t have to stay behind working after hours. They don’t worry about their next promotion and they don’t have to ingratiate themselves with bosses,” he said. “As a result, they report less anxiety, less depression, fewer work-life balance problems, lower levels of irritation and generally greater life satisfaction.”

Jana Haddow, a nurse from the Czech Republic now employed in the preop assessment unit at the Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, turned down a full-time job with the NHS to work for the Strand Nurses Bureau, part of the Advantage Healthcare Group.

“A permanent position in an NHS hospital wouldn’t give me the flexibility I get working for an agency,” she said. “You learn much more as an agency nurse working in different hospitals. It gives you more knowledge, experience and skills and if I do not want to return to a particular ward where there are interpersonal problems, I can simply ask not to be sent back there. I really enjoy the work.”

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