What Elif and Omar Ali experienced in temporary work

By Brigitte Gisel
Opportunities and risks of temporary work. What rules apply and where to get information.
Elif (name changed) is not well disposed towards his former temporary employment agency. “When I returned to work after my corona illness, the shift supervisor sent me home,” says the young Afghan. He was told that the company wanted to make sure that Elif would not infect anyone despite the negative tests. The young Afghan did as he was told, but at the end of the month, three days were suddenly missing from his pay slip. When he asked about it, he was told that he had neither worked nor been on sick leave. In the end, it was his word against Elif’s and she had three days less in her account. There was also trouble over the payment of travel costs. The end of the story: the temporary employment agency dismissed him. In the meantime, Elif has a new job in a regular company. His conclusion: “Temporary work might be good if you have no training and don’t know German well.” However, he himself, who speaks fluent German and has completed training in Germany, prefers to stay away from temporary employment agencies in future.
Temporary work is exhausting. Temporary employment agencies, but also the Federal Ministry of Labour, however, repeatedly emphasise the prospects of using temporary employment as a stepping stone to a regular job. Temporary work offers opportunities especially for people with low qualifications who are currently unemployed, it says on the website of the Federal Ministry of Labour, for example. “As a migrant, you can particularly benefit from temporary work,” says the Federal Employment Agency. On the one hand, to get to know the language and company culture better, and on the other hand, because companies often find it difficult to assess foreign qualifications. Every second job that a temporary employment agency places is an unskilled job, according to the ministry. Omar Ali (name changed) has also had this experience. In Iraq, he had worked in the media sector after completing his training. After fleeing, he worked in warehousing, shipping and picking for temporary employment agencies in Germany. “It is difficult for us,” he says.
But Omar Ali has also experienced that the leap from temporary work to a regular job can also be much more difficult than expected. For seven months he was employed by his temporary employment agency at a company. Everything went well. “The company said we’ll make a contract with you,” the Iraqi recounts. But it did not come to that. The temporary employment agency told him he had to stay for at least a year. Omar Ali then pulled the ripcord and quit. Today he works in a normal job that a friend found for him.
His story proves what the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) has stated. “The narrative that temporary work offers a low-threshold entry into the labour market, followed by regular employment, is contradicted by reality,” says the press office. The DGB also refers to the counselling centre “Mira – Mit Recht bei der Arbeit” for information and advice. “The results of the DGB index (a survey, the editors) show that in the majority of cases temporary work is not good work and is not perceived as such,” writes the press office of the DGB state association in Stuttgart.
What exactly is temporary work? Temporary work means that a worker is employed by a company, but the place of work is different. Temporary employment agencies lend their workers to another company for a certain period of time. The user company pays the temporary employment agency a fee for this. Employee A from the temporary employment agency is thus employed by company B. The contracting party is the temporary employment agency. The contracting party is the temporary employment agency, but the concrete instructions for the work come from company B. Temporary work does not mean that you have a fixed-term employment contract. This can happen, but it is not the rule. In principle, however, you are not allowed to work in the same company for longer than 18 months. And for companies in the meat sector, other, stricter, regulations apply. According to the DGB, the temporary employment agency must pay wages even if there is no work in the company – provided that the employee makes it clear that he or she wants to work. “The temporary employment agency may neither charge you minus hours on your working time account for this time without your consent, nor force you to take leave, nor simply dismiss you,” the DGB states.
Equal rights and obligations: As far as regulations such as continued payment of wages in case of illness and protection against dismissal are concerned, temporary workers are not in a worse position than other workers. This is confirmed by the Federal Ministry of Labour. However, according to the DGB, temporary workers have no protection against dismissal under the Dismissal Protection Act for the first six months.
Pay: The pay for temporary agency work is slightly above the minimum wage. The minimum wage increased from 10.88 euros to 12.43 euros on 1 October 2022, becoming 13 euros on 1 April 2023 and 13.50 euros on 1 January 2024. The hourly wages in the temporary employment industry are thus in any case above the minimum wage of 12 euros. For the better-paid wage groups, further collective bargaining is currently underway. Since 2017, the rule has been that temporary workers must be paid the same as permanent staff after nine months. However, there are many exceptions to this rule due to collective agreements.
What are the motives for applying to a temporary employment agency? Elif wanted to bridge time after his temporary contract expired and he did not find a new job immediately. “I didn’t want to be unemployed,” he says. As a former asylum seeker, he wants to acquire German citizenship at all costs and wants to avoid anything that could get in the way of that.
So how does one find a good job with a temporary employment agency? If you are looking for a job with a temporary employment agency, you can get information in the same way as for any other job search: Ask friends, acquaintances and relatives about their experiences and search the internet for reviews—taking into account that these may be coloured. It is also advantageous if a temporary employment agency is a member of one of the large industry associations such as the Federal Employers’ Association of Personnel Service Providers (BAP) or the Association of German Temporary Employment Agencies (IGZ).
Further information:
https://mira-beratung.de
https://www.dgb.de/-/bgE
https://www.dgb.de/-TGZ
https://www.arbeitsagentur.de/arbeitslos-arbeit-finden/zeitarbeit

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Arbeitszeitblatt. Foto: tünews INTERNATIONAL / Linda Kreuzer.

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