What is a temporary worker?
A temporary worker is a person hired by a temporary work agency to work, for a limited time, at another company called the user. Three parties are involved, and only two of them are bound by an employment contract: the worker and the agency. The agency and the user sign a commercial contract. The worker and the user sign nothing.
The FPS Employment puts it plainly: throughout the assignment, the agency remains the sole legal employer, while the user exercises day-to-day authority over the work. The legal framework is the law of 24 July 1987 on temporary work.
How is a temporary worker different from an interim contract?
One is the person, the other is the document. The interim contract is the employment contract the agency signs with the worker, with its legal reason, its written form and its duration. This entry is about the person on the other side of it: their position at the user company, their pay and their rights.
A temporary worker is not a fixed-term employee either. On a fixed-term contract (CDD), the company you work at is your employer. As a temporary worker, it is not, even if you sit in its office every day for months.
What rights does a temporary worker have in Belgium?
Pay comes first. A temporary worker's pay cannot be lower than what a permanent employee in the same position at the user company would receive, and that includes benefits such as meal vouchers, unless a joint committee agreement grants equivalent benefits another way.
The worker is also protected by the limits on temporary work itself. Only licensed agencies may operate, licences are granted by the regions, and a user may only use temporary workers for reasons set by law, such as replacing a permanent employee, a temporary increase in workload, exceptional work or a path to a permanent job. If a user uses temporary work outside those cases, the worker and the user are considered bound by an open-ended contract.
Where does temporary work fit in IT and engineering?
It is one route among several, next to freelance missions, secondment by a consultancy and fixed-term contracts. It is used for replacements, peaks of work and, through the insertion reason, as a way to test a hire before a permanent contract, which is close in spirit to contract to perm.
For a candidate, the useful questions are the same in every sector: who the employer is, which legal reason the assignment rests on, and what happens when it ends. Openings on the Sparagus job board can be filtered by contract type, which is the first thing to check.
