Over a million fixed-term employees have new rights to equal treatment on pay, pensions, holidays, sick pay and training, from 1st October. The new rights will also stop the practice of using successive fixed-term contracts in what are effectively permanent posts.
Alan Johnson MP, Employment Relations Minister, said: "Fixed-term contracts can provide flexibility for both employers and employees and allow people to try out new careers or work around particular interests or responsibilities. What they are not, is an excuse to pay people less or exclude them from their rights at work. It is important that employers and employees are able to agree contracts that suit their circumstances and that fixed-term employees get a fair deal."
The regulations will benefit employees on fixed-term contracts for a particular time, task or for contracts that finish when a particular event happens. For example, people on contracts for a year, to do a project or to cover for a career break would be included. They do not apply to agency temps or apprentices.
The regulations mean that fixed-term employees should not be treated less favourably than similar permanent employees unless there is an objective justification for the difference. The Regulations make provision about what constitutes objective justification. Guidance on the regulations is available from the DTI.
However, employers can choose to look at overall packages of terms and conditions. For example, it is open to an employer to compensate a fixed term employee through a higher salary, in lieu of that person not having access to some other benefit, such as a pension scheme. They will also mean that, if someone is employed on a string of successive fixed-term contracts for four or more years, their contract will be treated as permanent, unless there is a justifiable reason for continuing to employ them on fixed term contracts.
The Regulations also provide that where a fixed-term employee who has been continuously employed on fixed-term contracts for four years or more is re-engaged on a fixed-term contract without his continuity being broken, the new contract has effect under the law as a permanent contract unless the renewal on a fixed-term basis was objectively justified or unless employers and employees in that workplace or sector have agreed alternative arrangements.
