Missing payments suggest employment laws may have been breached by recruitment agencies used by courier company<\/p>\n
Low-paid temporary workers at one of the UK\u2019s top courier businesses have missed out on entitlements to sick pay and pension contributions, internal documents suggest.<\/p>\n
The payments \u2013 typically included in the \u201ccharge rate\u201d that large brands pay recruitment companies to supply them with temporary workers \u2013 are missing from internal spreadsheets calculating the cost of employing thousands of transient staff working at DPD.<\/p>\n
This absence suggests workers have either not been paid their entitlements, were discouraged from taking days off when sick, or were removed from roles before pension contributions became due, experts said.<\/p>\n
Zo\u00eb Lagadec, principal at Mulberry\u2019s employment law solicitors, said: \u201cThis raises questions if the workers are receiving statutory sick pay \u2013 as it doesn\u2019t make sense that nobody gets ill \u2013 or if they are being moved on before 12 weeks service in order to avoid pension contributions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Withholding sick pay or pension contributions when they come due would be a breach of employment law by recruitment agencies and seemingly contravenes industry guidance published by the Association of Labour Providers.<\/p>\n
The trade body\u2019s charge rate guidance adds: \u201cSupermarkets, brands and other labour users have a clear responsibility to ensure that labour providers throughout their supply chains are paid rates that fully reflect legal employment costs and compliance obligations.<\/p>\n
\u201cLabour users that pay unrealistically low rates are knowingly or recklessly conniving in illegality as these rates can only be achieved through worker exploitation, tax evasion or both.\u201d<\/p>\n
DPD promotes itself as \u201cone of Europe\u2019s leading parcel groups\u201d and is wholly owned by France\u2019s La Poste. It says its team exceeds 15,000 people, operating more than 10,000 vehicles from 84 locations and delivering more than 260m parcels a year. Its customers have included John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and Amazon.<\/p>\n
The Guardian has seen internal DPD records detailing the discrete costs of more than 3,000 temporary workers hired by the courier during the past two financial years. The documents include hourly pay rates, holiday pay, employer\u2019s national insurance contributions and a margin for the temporary recruitment agency, but do not include any sick pay or pension.<\/p>\n
Industry experts questioned whether any temporary recruitment agency, which is technically the employer of the workers, could make any profit from DPD\u2019s charge rates if it then paid the sick pay and pension entitlements to its thousands of staff.<\/p>\n
Sick pay is now a right on the first day\u2019s absence, although before April it only became due after three days off. Pension contributions are paid by the employer after 12 weeks in the job.<\/p>\n
The Guardian outlined to DPD the records seen and what they appear to show. The company said: \u201cOur commercial arrangements with our agencies allow them to fulfil their statutory obligations and are benchmarked against competitors in the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the courier company added: \u201cAt DPD, we take our legal, regulatory and ethical responsibilities extremely seriously. As a client, engaging third-party employment agencies, DPD pays an agreed commercial charge rate to agency suppliers for providing temporary labour.<\/p>\n
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