National union Unite has launched a national campaign aimed at ensuring workers get agreed rates of pay as well as terms and conditions.

The 'Play by the rules' campaign, launched on Wednesday at a national union meeting, will police key agreements across the UK and "enforce compliance".

A spokeman said: "The union has learned that employers are increasingly cherry picking the parts of the agreements that suit them while ignoring the rules that don’t, resulting in workers not receiving the correct rates of pay and other terms and conditions as well as the widespread use of agency labour. Unite is giving notice to all the major employers in the mechanical and electrical sector that it intends to use the full procedures of all the agreements to enforce compliance."

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Bernard McAulay, Unite national officer, said: "Unite will no longer stand by and accept some employers ignoring the rules that protect our members. In particular, we will challenge employers who are not complying with the rules around agency labour. The agreements state quite clearly that employers should make every effort to offer jobs on a directly employed basis and it is unacceptable that employers are flouting this and bringing insecurity and casualisation to the industry."

(NE)