The HGV Agency Fandango

Having recently renewed my class 1 licence, a personal opinion and sometimes tongue-in-cheek look at agency driving and what I’ve encountered re-entering the world of professional driving. Strictly speaking driving is not a profession, it’s a vocational skill, but leaving semantics aside …

According to Recruit International 2019, there are over 39000 agencies in the UK, an increase of nearly 4000 from the previous year. Consequently, they are the foreseeable future. Although it takes time to find something to suit you not them, initially you will be entering a gig economy world of [zb] in a sea of sharks. That’s not an exaggeration.

Playing Pass the Parcel Game
Employing someone is an expensive business. There are the overheads of paying employers N.I, statutory sick pay, holiday pay, employing an accountant(s) and staffing a HR department of self-described ‘executives’ who will ask mind-numbing questions such as, “have you got safety footwear” and “what does a sign on a bridge reading 13 feet mean?” With a never ending increase in EU regulations, employers found the optimum cost effective way is to pay agencies and let them shoulder the overheads.

Not surprisingly, agencies quickly discovered that they now had the same problem as the employers and use aggressive marketing to encourage their drivers to join ‘umbrella’ companies (several agencies run their own in-house schemes), with offers of £1 or £2 above the PAYE rate. For this small increase the driver now shoulders the large costs of paying an employer’s N.I to employ themselves, pay for their own holiday pay, statutory sick pay and pay a commission to the umbrella company for the privilege. A growing practice is to advertise umbrella and Ltd rates to disguise the low PAYE one (PAYE rates on request). You have to be seriously stupid to believe that if you pay employer overheads to employ yourself, you’re somehow going to be better off financially.

The Links

“Employers using agency drivers with self-employed status or who are hired through ‘umbrella’ companies have been warned by HM Revenue & Customs that they may well be breaking the rules, and could face substantial penalties.”

“I want to see someone come before the select committee and justify why umbrella companies are a good deal for the worker because at the moment I can’t see that there’s any advantage for the worker whatsoever.” – Iain Wright MP, Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.

There is a site that will work out the differences between PAYE and umbrella schemes. Scratch your head whilst testing an hourly rate of PAYE v Umbrella schemes to find out if you can earn more by paying commission out of your hourly rate to pay someone else’s overheads!

http://iknowtax.com/umbrella-calculator/

Where’s Everyone Gone?
In a recent FTA report of 500 logistics companies, the findings are that approximately 15% of driving vacancies remain unfilled and that a predicted further 35% of vacancies will remain vacant for up to six months. That report barely sees the light of day, yet if Tesco runs out of baked beans in their super stores that will make news headlines! The blame game suggests a shortage of drivers, but is the reality that these 15% vacancies are the low pay stressed filled jobs that are farmed out to agencies and which even the Eastern Europeans steer clear of? Additionally, several of the larger companies have permanent agency vacancies because they can’t hire drivers due to company policy induction processes, assessments, CO2 emission lectures, or retain them through micro-management practices … A mind numbing waste of time that saps the will to live. The good news and probability is that when there’s a real shortage of drivers, this current nonsense will end overnight.

The Recruitment Agency Fandango
Unfortunately, in an uncertain future the UK is now a ‘gig economy’, or technically a free labour market organized around short-term contracts and freelance (umbrella/Ltd) employment, despite the agency hype of, “exciting work, fantastic rates” and “wonderful opportunities.” A suggestion for agencies might include ditching the “free uniform” (£5 high-Viz vest with advertising agency logo), together with the pointless “24 hour helplines” and adding £1ph on the already abysmal PAYE hourly rate and watch the vacancies start to fill. There are an estimated 60,000 people with HGV licences in the UK who aren’t using them and there’s probably a simple reason why.

“But the opinion of drivers - according to a recent returnloads.net survey - is clear. More than 95% say increased wages would go a long way to solving the problem.”

Buyer Beware
Over ten years ago I was taking home £600 a week (6x10 hour shifts) on PAYE nights and that’s now a distant dream. The o/t after eight has long gone; many day/night rates are now the same and the latest scam is to promote umbrella schemes to make the driver pay the agency employer overheads. The mass influx of cheap East European foreign labour destroyed what was once a career for aspiring British HGV drivers and the requirement often now used of, “Be able to communicate effectively” is a polite way of saying, must speak English. The same politicians that dragged the UK into the EU are responsible for this and as we older drivers retire, there might well come a day in the not too distant future when we look back and find that the HGV driving ‘profession’ is now a near minimum wage occupation dominated by foreigners.

From jobs advertised as trunking that turn out to be shunting, to timesheets that pay for hours worked (not a minimum eight) and tramping to Scotland for £10.25ph … walk away, unless of course you’re a new starter and want a couple of months experience. That’s not to say good agency jobs don’t exist, but are few and far between and bad agencies far outweigh the good in the agency HGV Fandango. Personally speaking, the best job I ever had was an agency job, but so was the worst and if you do find a good one stick with it, because you’ve found an oasis in a desert.

Excellent post & unfortunately an accurate assessment of today’s haulage industry.

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Grandpa:
“But the opinion of drivers - according to a recent returnloads.net survey - is clear. More than 95% say increased wages would go a long way to solving the problem.”

Grandpa:
With a never ending increase in EU regulations, employers found the optimum cost effective way is to pay agencies and let them shoulder the overheads.

If it’s cost effective to evade the regulations (you name such pesky requirements as paying tax, sick pay, and HR costs, none of which arise from EU regulations), then there aren’t too many regs, but too few.

Other than that, good post to read!

Rjan:

Grandpa:
With a never ending increase in EU regulations, employers found the optimum cost effective way is to pay agencies and let them shoulder the overheads.

If it’s cost effective to evade the regulations (you name such pesky requirements as paying tax, sick pay, and HR costs, none of which arise from EU regulations), then there aren’t too many regs, but too few.

Other than that, good post to read!

No one has mentioned that the ‘pesky requirements’ arose from the EU. Businesses are increasingly looking for ways to maximize their profits and the EU open borders importation of cheap foreign labour from Eastern Europe, plus the agency scamming that is going on, go hand in hand. Are you seriously suggesting that remaining in the EU and importing more cheap foreign labour will make companies raise their salaries?

Grandpa:

Rjan:

Grandpa:
With a never ending increase in EU regulations, employers found the optimum cost effective way is to pay agencies and let them shoulder the overheads.

If it’s cost effective to evade the regulations (you name such pesky requirements as paying tax, sick pay, and HR costs, none of which arise from EU regulations), then there aren’t too many regs, but too few.

Other than that, good post to read!

No one has mentioned that the ‘pesky requirements’ arose from the EU. Businesses are increasingly looking for ways to maximize their profits and the EU open borders importation of cheap foreign labour from Eastern Europe, plus the agency scamming that is going on, go hand in hand. Are you seriously suggesting that remaining in the EU and importing more cheap foreign labour will make companies raise their salaries?

Immediately after listing such requirements you said “With a never ending increase in EU regulations, employers found the optimum cost effective way is to pay agencies and let them shoulder the overheads.”, and it is on that basis that I clarify that none of the things you mention actually ever originated from the EU.

I don’t want to labour the point though and detract from my praise, since I agree myself that the single market, and it’s enforced open borders for people, goods, services, and capital, are not in workers’ interests.

As I’ve said before, whilst I am entirely hostile to the Tories’ governance and will remain loyal to Corbyn regardless, I support Brexit (as does Corbyn personally, although the party as a whole scarcely does, and the vast majority of working-class Brexiteers apparently find every other excuse not to join the party and support Corbyn).

The majority (not all) of the unions’ leadership are also Eurosceptic, although with their only strongholds left in the likes of the car industry, they cannot possibly support the Tories in executing Brexit who (in pursuing Brexit for reasons that have nothing to do with helping workers) will undoubtedly allow these sectors to be shocked and decimated by the Brexit process, without providing the transitional support that a Labour government would.

I’m glad agencies exist. Because of the week by week or even day by day lengths of employment it has allowed me to both take work and take time off to work around my spinal injury and disability and without agencies I’d likely have spent much of the last 25 years unemployed. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people who have circumstances, either through health or whatever is going on in their lives where agencies have meant the difference between being able to work as and when they can earning a wage, getting £75 a week on the dole or if they were students, nothing. My experience of agencies over that period have been extremely positive save one who I ditched after 3 weeks.

Not all agencies are bad, there’s plenty of good ones and the bad ones only exist because drivers continue to work for them instead of voting with their feet and signing up with better ones. Unfortunately because of the way forums and facebook pages work you only ever hear about the bad ones. My current agency I’ve been with half a decade as of next week I find is excellent to work for. A fortnight ago upon being told I’d had to go in for emergency spinal surgery and receiving a 2 month sick note they told me they’d pay that first week on sick as holiday pay even though I’d used my holidays to date as the 2 month sick note would mean I’d earn another week holiday pay even if at the end of it I couldn’t return to driving. Given how much my holiday pay would’ve dropped after 2 months on sick pay it means they voluntarily chose to fork out an extra £240 they could have avoided and not done. They’re also planning me for a phased return to work as well.

Grandpa:
Disappearing drivers - why the UK desperately needs more truckers - RoadStars

As opposed to government transport policy.Why the UK needs less trucks on the road and why we intend to tax,legislate and obstruct them off the road at every opportunity to make it happen. :laughing:

Combined with the real world in which new drivers are blackmailed with zb work,because that’s mostly what there is because of the above,to ‘get their experience’ and then get type cast with it forever.Unless their face fits in which case the ‘experience’ issue probably won’t apply anyway. :bulb:

Great initial post sir!

See alsohttp://transportoperator.co.uk/2016/01/29/3568/

Note that, all these years later, the comment thread is still going strong. Nothing’s changed.

I wrote the original article, published in a paper read by Transport Managers.

Three years on, various organisations are still organising conferences on the ‘driver shortage’.

Perhaps a little less time and money spent on conferences and a little more money spent on drivers wages and facilities might just help?

Great post!

I’ll just add that “Sick Pay” even at PAYE agencies - seems more scant by the day. I’ve spent 5 of the last 9 years on different agencies and during that time I’ve come across:

0 agencies that paid any sick pay for the 4 shifts I dropped through actual illness over this period. One of them - let me go over it.
2 days where I turned up on time for a shift, only to be told “I’d been cancelled, and if you try to claim a minimum call out for it - you’ll never work here again”
3 days where I was cancelled as I was putting my coat on to come in.
3 days where I was sent to the wrong depot for a shift. (1 of those, the depot put me to use, and I got paid though - so I tip my hat to what was then Yodel, Aylesford for that)
2 payslips where £27 was deducted, and they lied and lied and lied that “I’d be better off for it”. I wasn’t. I was £27 down for it.
1 Agency that tried to charge me for PPE when I was clearly using my own already.
1 agency that only paid “average hours from previous 2 weeks” as “holiday pay” - only to NEVER EVER let me take a holiday after I’d just done a 5-6 fortnight with weekends/nights shifts in it.
4 agencies that never even gave me a first shift.
2 agencies that offered me a first shift over 80 miles away, which I refused on the grounds of “economically unviable” (5 hours guaranteed, £10ph in 2012 - commuting from Medway, Kent to (old) Iceland Harlow)
1 agency that offered me £12ph and when I got paid it was minimum wage instead “You didn’t ask us for it in writing pal, and there’s plenty of other fish in the sea if you’re done with us…”
1 agency that kept offering me horrible sounding shifts, that I took - but then they phoned straight back to say it was cancelled.
1 client that wouldn’t give me a shift - if I didn’t have any 15 hour availability left for that week.

…and on the upside…

2 client shifts (same agency) where I got paid 6 hours after being cancelled at the last minute
4 client shifts (2 agencies) where I was on “induction training” - but got paid. (supermarkets)
2 agencies where I got 12.07% of gross earnings paid into a “Holiday Pot” that then didn’t decay over time.
2 agencies that actually deducted the correct tax and NI - straight out of the gate.
2 agencies I didn’t get a back tax demand from HMRC over
3 agencies that didn’t “Let me go” over something that was clearly the client or agency’s fault.
2 agencies that actually had the promised “Plenty of work, ongoingly…”
1 agency that got me a temp-perm full time job for nearly three years at one of their clients

Winseer:
Great post!

I’ll just add that “Sick Pay” even at PAYE agencies - seems more scant by the day. I’ve spent 5 of the last 9 years on different agencies and during that time I’ve come across:

0 agencies that paid any sick pay for the 4 shifts I dropped through actual illness over this period. One of them - let me go over it.

They don’t have to. You can’t qualify for SSP until the fourth day you’ve been off in a row.

Conor:

Winseer:
Great post!

I’ll just add that “Sick Pay” even at PAYE agencies - seems more scant by the day. I’ve spent 5 of the last 9 years on different agencies and during that time I’ve come across:

0 agencies that paid any sick pay for the 4 shifts I dropped through actual illness over this period. One of them - let me go over it.

They don’t have to. You can’t qualify for SSP until the fourth day you’ve been off in a row.

Sure they don’t have to… But if you took 1-4 days off sick from a full time job, you presumably would get paid, even in 2019?

Winseer:
Sure they don’t have to… But if you took 1-4 days off sick from a full time job, you presumably would get paid, even in 2019?

Not in a lot of low/unskilled jobs especially with smaller firms. Tends to be the case where you work in a company where much of the work is semi-skilled and skilled requiring a certain level of qualification or public sector/blue chip but if you’re working in low skilled jobs then SSP is all you get.

I went to an agency recently and the discussion turned to pay which went something like this.

So what’s the hourly rate ?
£13.
Is that PAYE or Limited ?
Limited.
So what’s the PAYE rate ?
Not entirely sure. About a pound an hour less.
Can you give me the exact figure please.

Went away for a few minutes then came back. They’ve obviously successfully made every driver before me go limited to the point they don’t even know their own PAYE rates.

It’s £11.75 per hour.
Does that include holiday pay ?
What do you mean ?
If I take a day/week off will I get paid ?
No you’d have to pay into a pot from your wages.

I wrapped it up as quickly and politely as I could and left. I remember doing agency work nearly 20 years ago and the hourly rate advertised was what you got. Seems to me now they’re trying any old trick to disguise how crap it really is.

£13 an hour sounds great. £11.75 minus holiday pay less so. OT rates were dire too. Just a quid an hour extra, same as night rate. No wonder they were desperate.

Rjan:

Grandpa:

Rjan:

Grandpa:
With a never ending increase in EU regulations, employers found the optimum cost effective way is to pay agencies and let them shoulder the overheads.

If it’s cost effective to evade the regulations (you name such pesky requirements as paying tax, sick pay, and HR costs, none of which arise from EU regulations), then there aren’t too many regs, but too few.

Other than that, good post to read!

No one has mentioned that the ‘pesky requirements’ arose from the EU. Businesses are increasingly looking for ways to maximize their profits and the EU open borders importation of cheap foreign labour from Eastern Europe, plus the agency scamming that is going on, go hand in hand. Are you seriously suggesting that remaining in the EU and importing more cheap foreign labour will make companies raise their salaries?

Immediately after listing such requirements you said “With a never ending increase in EU regulations, employers found the optimum cost effective way is to pay agencies and let them shoulder the overheads.”, and it is on that basis that I clarify that none of the things you mention actually ever originated from the EU.

I don’t want to labour the point though and detract from my praise, since I agree myself that the single market, and it’s enforced open borders for people, goods, services, and capital, are not in workers’ interests.

As I’ve said before, whilst I am entirely hostile to the Tories’ governance and will remain loyal to Corbyn regardless, I support Brexit (as does Corbyn personally, although the party as a whole scarcely does, and the vast majority of working-class Brexiteers apparently find every other excuse not to join the party and support Corbyn).

The majority (not all) of the unions’ leadership are also Eurosceptic, although with their only strongholds left in the likes of the car industry, they cannot possibly support the Tories in executing Brexit who (in pursuing Brexit for reasons that have nothing to do with helping workers) will undoubtedly allow these sectors to be shocked and decimated by the Brexit process, without providing the transitional support that a Labour government would.

I meant combined EU WTD and employer’s greed with a low cost foreign workforce. Perhaps the transport industry needed regulating, but it also meant increased costs and no company takes a profit loss; they find ways to make others pay for it. Low wages is a perfect example.

I have some bad news for you. Corbyn is a remainer, as was Cameron and May. This cuts across party politics. There is no need for a second referendum, or a ‘people’s vote’, we’ve already had one. Brexit wasn’t about leaving the EU on conditions of a deal, it was in or out. If we can get a deal that benefits the UK all well and good, but not just one that leaves us with one foot in the door on EU terms.

If the EU introduced an open door policy that allowed the cheap import of foreign labour, how can it not be of benefit to the working class to close that border? How can a mass of minimum wage labour be good for British workers, because go into any transport warehouse and the whole lot are on £8.21 - £9ph. I passed my test in 1988 and I’ve recently had a class 1 job offered me at £10ph! I (not so politely) refused and the rate suddenly magically rose.

To the new passed agency drivers I’d say this. Don’t let them exploit you. When they really need someone your hourly rate will rise. You put a lot of time, effort and cost into getting your licence and experienced or not, you have the same responsibilities as we ‘others.’ Your n/s side mirror cowling didn’t fall off accidently and that scrape down your trailer side didn’t appear by magic. You’ll make mistakes and get the experience, but don’t accept ‘apprentice’ rates for your basic skills.

Grandpa:
I meant combined EU WTD and employer’s greed with a low cost foreign workforce.

You got it backwards - it’s the general public’s (aka consumers) greed for low price goods. Everyone wants to buy more - now, pay less - later, if possible - with 0 thought about the real cost down the line.

ETS:

Grandpa:
I meant combined EU WTD and employer’s greed with a low cost foreign workforce.

You got it backwards - it’s the general public’s (aka consumers) greed for low price goods. Everyone wants to buy more - now, pay less - later, if possible - with 0 thought about the real cost down the line.

The reality is that the vast majority of consumers do not sit around scheming ways to force down their own pay at work.

Consumers could not even possibly be expected to know whether the supermarket selling cheap goods was doing so as a result of attacks on their own wages at work, or as a result of better investment or organisation, or even as a result of lower profits. Consumers have no right to inspect records, to demand data, or to inspect private areas and question staff.

Correspondingly, they cannot know whether tolerating higher prices in the shops means allowing more pay for themselves as workers, or whether it just means super-profits for CEOs and shareholders (who may well attack workers at the same time as putting up prices).

The idea that I should walk into a shop and behave as a supply chain analyst when selecting my loaf of bread is simply absurd. Standing in front of the shelf in the supermarket is not even the appropriate place to engage in such analysis, even if I were inclined to perform it for each and every good on the shelf, even if the tidal wave of information were available, and even if there were actually choices as a result (since there’s no point analysing the price of bread, only to find that all available loaves are made by poorly paid workers, and I must either accept that and buy, or else go hungry).

Whereas bosses do actually sit around scheming ways to force down the pay of workers. They do have payroll information. They do have the right to inspect and question. They are paid for the time they spend doing this, as a full-time job. And they do have power to impose their own decisions, not simply select amongst equally poor choices presented to them.

Grandpa:

Rjan:

I meant combined EU WTD and employer’s greed with a low cost foreign workforce. Perhaps the transport industry needed regulating, but it also meant increased costs and no company takes a profit loss; they find ways to make others pay for it. Low wages is a perfect example.

I’m still not really following. Restrictions on working hours existed before the WTD. Informal expectations, collective agreements, and domestic regulations - at least one of which was often, in the past, more stringent than the WTD is. Even just to count the cost of overtime, bosses had to track the hours they were making workers perform.

If employers have broadly reasonable working patterns, they would not even need to concern themselves with the detail of the WTD. The employer who has half an hour for lunch in the middle of an 8 hour shift, and 5 weeks holiday a year (on top of bank holidays), doesn’t need to be closely counting anything under the WTD, because his normal practice embeds compliance.

If there were ad-hoc complaints, such as a worker who has kept meticulous records of every minute he has spent at work and says he was underpaid £20 a year holiday pay because he’s done an exceptional amount of overtime, could just be dealt with by an ad-hoc resolution out of petty cash.

It’s because employers want to keep meticulous records for their own entirely separate reasons, and push every aspect of pay and conditions right to the wire of the law (which were often formulated generously to employers in the first place so as to impose no burden on reasonable employers), that the swines of the industry become buried in paperwork and the complexity of compliance.

I have some bad news for you. Corbyn is a remainer, as was Cameron and May. This cuts across party politics. There is no need for a second referendum, or a ‘people’s vote’, we’ve already had one. Brexit wasn’t about leaving the EU on conditions of a deal, it was in or out. If we can get a deal that benefits the UK all well and good, but not just one that leaves us with one foot in the door on EU terms.

Cameron and May were declared Remainers.

Nobody however believes that Corbyn has had a damascene conversion in respect of his Euroscepticism.

Labour is Remain for two reasons. Firstly, the balance of views in the party, against which Corbyn is not in a position to unilaterally impose his own view. Secondly, nobody supports a Tory Brexit, because their motivations are utterly malign toward workers. The fact that workers could benefit from a Brexit, does not mean they will benefit from the Tory Hard Brexit supplemented by 5 more years of Tory domestic policy following Brexit, or even from a deal that Johnson could theoretically strike (followed by Tory domestic policy).

I’ve made clear that my attitude to Brexit changed since the referendum. My attitude to the Tories has not however changed.

If the EU introduced an open door policy that allowed the cheap import of foreign labour, how can it not be of benefit to the working class to close that border? How can a mass of minimum wage labour be good for British workers, because go into any transport warehouse and the whole lot are on £8.21 - £9ph. I passed my test in 1988 and I’ve recently had a class 1 job offered me at £10ph! I (not so politely) refused and the rate suddenly magically rose.

I’m not arguing with you on these issues. I agree with you.

To the new passed agency drivers I’d say this. Don’t let them exploit you. When they really need someone your hourly rate will rise. You put a lot of time, effort and cost into getting your licence and experienced or not, you have the same responsibilities as we ‘others.’ Your n/s side mirror cowling didn’t fall off accidently and that scrape down your trailer side didn’t appear by magic. You’ll make mistakes and get the experience, but don’t accept ‘apprentice’ rates for your basic skills.

Agreed. Part of the solution to this is that workers have to stop agreeing with the idea that only a minority deserve to have decent pay for special or unusual skills, or that a properly functioning meritocracy is one in which only a minority deserve excess whilst the rest sink into the mire.

Drivers all the time struggle to argue that their work is not as “unskilled” as the next man’s, that they have all these rules unlike the warehouseman, that their accident record is better than most, or that they have 30 years under their belts, all geared to arguing why they, unlike most others, should be on a basic decent wage.

Most people doing even the most routine and repetitive work have spent 10 years in school and more years on the job to be able to do it - for today’s kids, it’s often more like 15 or 20 years in school before they’ll let you be a “sandwich artist” (i.e. the same sort of work the women in Sayers were doing 30 years ago, probably then simply called a “cook” or a “baker”).

The reality is that if you’re getting out of bed and doing 40 hours a week or more, and have normal bills and responsibilities, that is already quite enough to justify that you deserve a decent wage for it now, and a pension later when you’re too old or worn out by ailments.

There’s a ad board in a field near the clockwise approach to J28 off-slip on the M25…
It has been there at least for the past year.


Anyone here tried the agency advertized there?

Pay in any job is a negotiation, whether on an individual or collective basis. That’s not collective as in Union but as in workers in a job won’t work for less than £££. Over time though this dynamic can change due to demand or even perception, a job is perceived as well paid can then become overcrowded so driving rates down.
Lorry driving 50 years ago was a job most either couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Draughty, slow, noisy and hard to drive not to mention dodgy digs or a board across the seats. Punctures meant a wheel change, yourself. Minor breakdowns, get the spanners out. Result was drivers wanted reasonable money to do it.
Today however truck driving is like driving a long car. Guys who would have been street sweepers, labourers or worked in other low skilled jobs that have disappeared now drive trucks. Easy life, anyone can drive, right? Obviously this is not conducive to a high wage occupation.

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