Are agencies killing the haulage industry

Pat Hasler:
Drivers need to get together and refuse to work for them,

In a market characterised by an over-supply of drivers, and appalling social security, how can drivers simply get together and refuse to work? If drivers who are out of work refused to work for agencies, then the surplus drivers would probably be unemployed and facing penury.

I know it would be hard at first but if all those agency drivers got together and went to the companies such agencies supplied and offered their services as freelance drivers in a group they could cut the disgusting rates that agencies charge those companies and at the same time increase their own hourly wages.

And why would the employers choose to deal with this self-organised, self-confident freelance bloc? (Unless they had to.) Those in the bloc would still have to find a way of distributing a limited amount of work amongst a relative excess of drivers - there would have to be an overtime ban, for example, and an end to 80 hour weeks, to ensure that there was work available for every member.

And if the employers had to pay the freelance bloc the same (or more) as their existing employees, they’d just stick with the existing drivers they had. Most of the jobs in this industry, all the hiring and firing, just reflects the turnover of staff whilst the employers drive down pay and conditions, and high-paying firms are undermined or replaced by lower-paying firms. Every time you hear about a firm “winning a contract”, what that means is that a firm which paid better money to workers, has just been undermined and replaced by a firm that pays less.