One in three people employed through a temporary employment agency needs a second job to keep their head above water financially and almost half find it difficult to make ends meet, according to a survey by the CNV trade union federation.

Six in 10 of the 600 people interviewed said they would rather have a permanent job and 25% said they have to be available on a full time basis, even though they only work part time.

Staffing agency workers are no longer being used to replace sick workers or take up the slack in peak periods but have become a structural part of the workforce, CNV chairman Arend van Wijngaarden said.

‘These are shocking figures,’ he said. ‘There are some 275,000 people working through staffing agencies at the moment and this means 130,000 of them cannot make ends meet and live in uncertainty. This is unacceptable, and it is time to call a halt to this damaging trend.’

Some 86% of the staffing agency workers in the survey said they were doing exactly the same work as people on permanent contracts.