Jenny Holdcroft.  Agency work has exploded way beyond what it was originally conceived to do, namely replacing workers on a temporary basis according to temporary needs. Instead what we are seeing is at a large scale is replacement of permanent jobs with temporary work. Often the same individuals will, over the years, be doing the same job only ever on temporary contracts, so that they don't have any seniority. Another finding is the undermining of workers' rights. This is where the triangular relationship is the key – user enterprise, worker, agency – the systemic problem with this type of employment is that it stripes workers of their fundamental labor rights, such as the rights to join a union and to collective bargaining. Joining a union is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for reasons depending on the country: in some countries it is unlawful to join union when you are agency workers, in other cases it is allowed but because people are only temporary workers they don't see the point. But the reason agency workers join unions primarily is to bargain collectively and have their say over their pay. And this is almost impossible because if you are an agency worker, you can't bargain with the company you are performing work for because it is not your employer, you can't bargain with the agency which actually on paper employs you because they actually have no control over your actual paying conditions which are controlled by the manager of the user company. And in some cases workers don't even know who their employer is.