In recent years, there has been a trend for trade unions to attempt to represent contingent workers, including agency staff, workers on fixed-term contracts and the self-employed. This article seeks to explain and characterize this development in the UK. The main conclusions are that contingent...

The growth of agency work in recent years has posed a challenge to trade unions, which must decide if they will accept agency workers as part of their constituency and accept employment agencies as legitimate labour-market actors. This article analyses the reaction of British unions to agency...