Transnational Regulation of Temporary Agency Work: Compromised Partnership between Private Employment Agencies and Global Union Federations

This article critically assesses the potential for the international regulation of Temporary Agency Work (TAW) through the use of Transnational Private Labour Regulation (TPLR). Given the limits of existing national and international regulation of TAW, particularly in developing countries, and the current deadlock in dialogue through the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the argument of this article is that TPLR offers a unique opportunity to break this regulatory deadlock and establish a basis for dialogue between the Global Union Federations (GUFs) and major Private Employment Agencies (PrEAs). This article goes on to propose three potential platforms for partnership that, although compromised, are transparent, fair and sufficiently elastic to accommodate the distributive and political risks associated with partnership. They also offer important gains, namely increasing the competitive advantage of the PrEAs involved, securing minimum standards for agency workers and ‘field enlarging’ strategies for the GUFs and their affiliates.