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Temp agencies are also known as temporary work agencies. These agencies discover and retain employees who want to work in temporary employment. The temporary work agencies are different from recruitment agencies in a way because they place employees for a limited period. Such employees may be known as freelancers, consultants, or interim employees who work either full-time or part-time and may be eligible to receive company benefits. Health care industry, industrial labor, secretarial jobs, security staffing or housekeeping are some of the fields in which temp agencies specialize in. Details of the professionals are retained by these agencies so that these people may be contacted when there is job availability. These employees are retained by the temp agency and not by the company for which these employees are performing the job. If the employment is terminated without providing any notice, conflicts of discrimination may crop up. Below are a few questions that have been answered regarding temp agency laws: A temporary employee has been working in a company for a year. This employee has worked for 40 hours each week and was paid by the temp agency in the first half of the year and by the company in the second half of the year. Would this employee qualify to receive FMLA benefits?
Any public or private company with 50 or more employees would be governed by the Family Medical and Leave Act (FMLA). Employees would be eligible for 12 weeks of unpaid leave every year for any serious medical situation of the employee or his/her immediate family member, birth and care of the employee’s newborn child or placement of a child with the employee for adoption or foster care. To be eligible for receiving benefits under FMLA an employee should have clocked at least 1,250 hours in a 12-month period prior to requesting leave. In the above scenario as one has been paid by different parties, the law would view them as agents of one another and, they would be considered as one company. One may be eligible to receive the benefits if he/she has met all the requirements of the Act. Would it be legal for a temp agency to ask the company to which it provides staffing services to provide three warning notices to an employee before terminating him/her?
The agreement that the company has made with the temp agency may be the reason for the company to face such a situation. These agreements would have terms mentioned with regards to the treatment that may be meted out to the employees, terms of employment and termination. The company would have agreed to the terms mentioned in the agreement when the temp agency would have been signed on. One may consider hiring the services of another temp agency if the policies of the present temp agency do not match the policies of the company. A person completed the temporary job in a company that he/she got through a temp agency. The company offered this person a job in another department. However, it was brought to the notice of the employee that the company should not hire the services of this employee for another year or pay a fee. Can this be considered as a correct practice?
It is legal for a temp agency to include terms in the agreement that would require a fee for employing a temporary employee as a permanent employee within the same company. Few other companies would consider reducing the fee or waiving it if the temporary employee is made a permanent employee. Basically, the terms of the agreement would be binding. Hence, one may consider approaching the company to verify if they would be interested in paying the fee to the temp agency to hire the employee as a permanent employee. Consider a situation where a temp agency placed a person to work in a company in Tennessee. This company offered to hire this person as a full-time employee. However, they placed this employee in a full-time position on a 30-day trial basis. Later, this employee was informed that the company is not currently hiring and that the employee may continue to work full-time on a temp basis with temp pay. What legal action can this employee take?
Tennessee is an at-will employment state where one may be hired at any point of time and terminated for any or no reason at all. This would imply that the company has the right to decide if it would wish to hire the employee or not. Just because one was offered a job does not bind them to a contract. A temp agency has placed an employee in a healthcare providing company. This employee informed the company that there were discrepancies in the company’s claims processing and that it violated the law. The employee was terminated due to this. Wouldn’t this be considered as illegal?
If one has identified and reported a suspected law violation, it would be illegal to terminate such an employee. One may file a retaliation complaint against the company for reporting an illegal procedure that was followed by the company. However, as this person is employed by the temp agency and is not an employee of the company, this may lead to some complication. To counter this one may argue that he/she was a borrowed or a shared employee. In one’s own interest, it would be better to hire the services of a local employment attorney who may be able to direct one in the right direction. Also, one may consider notifying the State Department of Health and Hospitals and the State Insurance Commissioner of the suspected violations. It is possible for companies to fire people who are on at-will employment contracts if they were hired through temp agencies. It would not matter if one is in the middle of the projected time-frame of an assignment. There have been instances where the temp agencies with less repute have taken aboard professionals without completely verifying the credentials, which would lead to termination. If this were to occur questions of the legality of the termination would arise. You may ask an employment lawyer if you have any questions about such temp agencies.
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