Dear clients and cooperation partners,
We would like to inform you that the Lithuanian Parliament has adopted the Law on Employment via Work Agencies (The Law on Work Agencies). This should come into force on 1 December 2011. The law addresses relations among agency workers, work agencies, and their service users. Until now, no legal acts regulated this kind of activity in Lithuania.
Under the Law on Work Agencies, work agencies assign their employees to work temporarily for service users under supervision of service users. Standard employment responsibilities remain with the work agency. The work agency and the service user should conclude a commercial contract indicating the qualifications and duties of agency workers, assignment terms and conditions, professional training and other relevant issues.
Companies using agency services will bear special obligations towards agency workers. They will have to ensure non-discriminatory conditions against temporary staff, present internal regulations and other documents to agency workers before starting the assignment and will be responsible for e.g. health and safety requirements. Users will have to inform agency workers about new vacancies so that these workers have opportunities of permanent employment in the company where they are assigned.
The Law on Work Agencies limits the service user’s right to use agency workers under certain circumstances e.g. for replacing employees who are on strike or former employees.
The new law provides special remuneration guarantees for agency workers. During assignments their salaries must be equivalent to those they would receive if they were directly employed by the service user. This rule does not apply if the employee has a permanent employment contract with the agency and is paid a regular salary between assignments.
Under the Law on Work Agencies, as part of their guarantees agency workers are protected from:
- discrimination against permanent staff
- restrictions on being employed by a company using agency services or elsewhere
- claims to cover expenses of temporary employment.
Work agencies will have to file information on temporary employment activities and the number of agency workers with the State Labour Inspectorate.
The new law is expected to provide better options for personnel management and will encourage job creation. Please consider new opportunities for your business and the new compliance requirements. |