Temporary Agency Workers - Whose Employees Are They?

• Author: Paul Wearing
• Pages: 25-27

•25

CHAPTER SIX

Temporary Agency Workers —

Whose Employees Are They?

What You Should Know

Until amendments to the Employment Standards Act, 20001 in 2009,

there was confusion and litigation over the question, whose employees

are temporary agency workers? The amendments sought to clarify the

identity of the true employer of temporary agency workers. The law now

mandates that temporary workers assigned to a client of a temporary help

agency are employees of the temporary help agency.2 But despite the

statutory declaration in the Employment Standards Act, 2000 that tempo-

rary workers supplied by an agency are the employees of the agency and

not the business that they are assigned to, the Ontario Labour Relations

Board will in all likelihood consider temporary agency workers assign ed to

a business to be employees of an employer targeted in a union certif‌ica-

tion application for the purpose of determining the number of employees

in a potential bargaining unit.

When a person and a temporary help agency agree, in writing or orally,

that the agency will assign or attempt to assign the person to perform

work on a temporary basis for clients or potential clients of the agency,

the temporary help agency becomes the employer of the person and

the person becomes an employee of the temporary help agency. The

employer-employee relationship between the temporar y help agency and

the temporary worker continues regardless of whether the worker is on

assignment working for a client of the agency or not. Employment ends