The substitution or limiting of permanent direct employment by the use of contract & agency labour has clearly become a priority issue for countless workers and their trade unions, in every region of the world and every sector.
Each year, more and more directly employed jobs are lost to sub-contracting companies or agencies, which usually employ workers with little or no job security, inferior benefits, and with substandard working conditions. This is leading to a two-tier workforce with less and less directly employed workers, and increasing numbers employed through contracts or agencies.
The use of contract and agency labour is now so widespread that it has become a top priority for a large number of ICEM affiliates, so much so that we have launched a determined and sustained international response: the ICEM Contract and Agency Labour Campaign. The ICEM CAL Campaign allows trade unions world-wide to share CAL tools and experiences.

Meeting in Aberdeen; Scotland, November 10th, 2008, offshore oil and gas workers unions from the United Kingdom, Denmark, Netherlands, and Norway,...
A recent workshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina, saw workers’ representatives from 18 labour organisations, representing 50,000 rubber workers, come...
Twenty-Five trade union representatives from Japan, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam organising rubber workers’ met in Jakarta,...

Jørgen Juul Rasmussen, General Secretary, Danish Union of Electricians (Dansk El-Forbund): "We take the employers’ organisation to court".