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		New EU rules will cost jobs, says MEP Wednesday, 22nd October 2008 The European Parliament yesterday passed a new Directive on Temporary Workers. It is claimed that this will offer temporary workers and agency workers improved rights in the workplace, but a local MEP fears it will end up costing jobs, and blocking an established route back into regular employment for those who have been temporarily out of the labour force. East Midlands MEP, Roger Helmer, says; "By making it more expensive and more bureaucratic for firms to take on temporary workers, for example to cover seasonal peaks in demand, this will reduce the opportunities for temporary work, which in the past have been a ladder back into full time work and out of unemployment. Now we are kicking that ladder away. The new rules will make our labour markets less flexible, and add to business costs, just at the time when we can least afford it. This is a threat to competitiveness". He added; "I have spent some time talking to temporary employment agencies in the region, and I have been impressed by the high number of agency workers who are offered permanent jobs by their temporary employers. It is a tragedy that this may now become impossible". Asked if it wasn't simple justice that temporary workers should get exactly the same terms as full time employees, Helmer pointed out that someone coming in off the street to help for a few weeks with a seasonal rush could not reasonably expect exactly the same terms as an experienced, loyal employee who had been with the firm for many years. Our Labour government opposed this measure for many years, although it has recently given way to pressure from the trade unions, who are now the Labour government's main pay-masters. But the fact is that the British government has no power to reject these measures from Brussels. Helmer especially pointed out that our elected government can no longer resist EU measures in many areas even when it regards them as damaging. "This is the way the EU is undermining our democracy", he said.