Update of the study towards Temporary Agency Work in Austria

No other sector has experienced such a strong dynamic in expansion in recent years as those of temporary work and temporary employment – this was not even experienced temporarily during the crisis years when businesses were affected by sharp short-term losses. Temporary work or temporary employment is especially valued by the business community as it provides flexible options for covering differences in capacity/workload. In order to prevent the risk of employees solely having to carry the full burden of flexibilization, representatives of employers and employees agreed on a labor leasing law already in the late 1980s.

After several years of negotiations, a collective agreement was signed in 2002 for the employment agency sector, which regulates, among other things, issues of pay and decoupling between work assignments and employment at transfer companies. Thanks to this manifold regulatory effort, Austria has a legal and collective agreement basis for temporary work or temporary employment, which can be seen as an example of good-practice in the EU.

However, a previous study from 2007 on temporary work or temporary employment showed quite clearly that it was not unusual for workers to often have had high workloads and precarious employment patterns with strong seasonal components. With this update of the study on temporary work or leasing, the extent to which agency workers are still second-class employees or, in other words, whether the gap between core and peripheral employees can been reduced is examined.

The study not only presents the status quo from different perspectives, but for the first time also provides results depicting the situation of temporary workers over the last 20 years. In addition to analyses of the recent regulations on temporary work or temporary employment, longitudinal and structural data analyses were carried out. In addition, temporary workers had their say in a representative survey. The study was enhanced by the inclusion of expert contributions.

The study volume is available for download here.