Catherwood LibraryILR School

Nearly 55,000 employment agencies in Europe hire hundreds of thousands of temporary workers each year for cheap manual labor and service jobs for employers wanting both flexibility and avoidance of high labor costs. Manual labor jobs range from pouring concrete in France, picking vegetables in the United Kingdom, and working assembly lines in Eastern Europe. Workers are often paid as little as $4.10 an hour, less than minimum wage in some countries. Some agencies transport employees to other countries, house them, and provide transportation to job sites, before moving them when their contracts expire. European citizens are permitted to work anywhere in the 28-nation bloc, but European regulators are increasing scrutiny on employers who rely on outsourced short-term worker, due to concerns that basic labor protections - such as social security benefits and sick leave - are deteriorating. A third of Europeans are in atypical employment, ranging from Uber drivers to pilots. Companies such as Foxconn and Panasonic find employment agencies useful as the economic recovery has made finding low-cost labor difficult, resulting in agencies signing on migrant workers who may have little understanding that the contracts they sign, sometimes in a foreign language, may subject them to frequent overtime hours as well as being on call. Such workers are easily exploited, but support has been building for greater protections, with the European Commission proposing a new labor authority to fight questionable employment methods, while French President Macron wants stricter regional labor rules.