1. The basic working and employment conditions of temporary agency workers shall be, for the duration of their assignment at a user undertaking, at least those that would apply if they had been recruited directly by that undertaking to occupy the same job.

4. Provided that an adequate level of protection is provided for temporary agency workers, Member States in which there is either no system in law for declaring collective agreements universally applicable or no such system in law or practice for extending their provisions to all similar undertakings in a certain sector or geographical area, may, after consulting the social partners at national level and on the basis of an agreement concluded by them, establish arrangements concerning the basic working and employment conditions which derogate from the principle established in paragraph 1.

The basic working and employment conditions applicable to temporary agency workers should be at least those which would apply to such workers if they were recruited by the user undertaking to occupy the same job.

For several years we've allowed people to have sporadic earnings, because that's not a demonstration that they can regularly work at a substantially gainful level, but a small minority of our clients—I think it's covered in the deck—do go back to work every year.

Although a proper selection of personnel, good working conditons, higher pay, more versatile activities and the opportunity for voluntary night and shift work may help to alleviate the problems associated with these patterns of work, all the abovementioned factors taken together are enough evidence that the biological costs of the work performance, especially if a longer term perspective is considered, vary according to the time of the day and its rythm, because the human body is subject to activity changes.

The European Commission is asking the Council of Ministers to set the objective of establishing at Singapore a working party to study the link between the multilateral trading system and core labour standards as part of the EU's contribution to the first World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial meeting there in December.