Brexit..more controversy/indecision!

[albion]

bald:

albion:
Don’t know if it was you or someone else said we look at things from their own radius, so from mine, there isn’t one, because we don’t even advertise, it’s all recommendation. And we aren’t on the face of it, the most appealing company to work for.

Just one question, how old is your average driver ?
I remember being a thread asking most people on here how old they are, and most are over 40, I even think most are over 50.
So that means that within a few years a massive amount of drivers will retire, and while there is new blood coming into the industry, they do not compensate for the people leaving.

If I compare to our firm, 80 percent of our drivers and staff are 55 and older, with only 5 percent younger then 30.

Some companies will never have a shortage, because of wages, work and material, but within a few years some companies will have a shortage.
All those manufacturers like Volvo, Scania, Mercedes and others are experimenting with platooning and driverless vehicles for a reason…

albion:
Though I’m with David H, I’ll be a bald woman arguing over a comb if I continue.

As my name already suggests…, I will not risk losing any more, so I will leave it here

I hope I can’t be accused of being baldist, bald…

I’ve just done an average and it’s 47.55! Bear in mind it’s a mix of truck and van drivers, I’ve got two that are 70 ( though one of just does a little drive round a customers site), at the other end two in their 20s, but most hover round the late 40s - early 50s.

I’ve no doubt that there will be a shortage, but as I said from where I am, we haven’t experienced one. I know a fellow haulier that couldn’t get an agency driver for love nor money over Glos way and that wasn’t even Xmas time. If I was to write an ad for a driver, then it would probably get a poor response as it doesn’t sound good on paper, but fortunately people hear about us and consequently we don’t struggle.

[franglais]

albion:

bald:

albion:
Don’t know if it was you or someone else said we look at things from their own radius, so from mine, there isn’t one, because we don’t even advertise, it’s all recommendation. And we aren’t on the face of it, the most appealing company to work for.

Just one question, how old is your average driver ?
I remember being a thread asking most people on here how old they are, and most are over 40, I even think most are over 50.
So that means that within a few years a massive amount of drivers will retire, and while there is new blood coming into the industry, they do not compensate for the people leaving.

If I compare to our firm, 80 percent of our drivers and staff are 55 and older, with only 5 percent younger then 30.

Some companies will never have a shortage, because of wages, work and material, but within a few years some companies will have a shortage.
All those manufacturers like Volvo, Scania, Mercedes and others are experimenting with platooning and driverless vehicles for a reason…

albion:
Though I’m with David H, I’ll be a bald woman arguing over a comb if I continue.

As my name already suggests…, I will not risk losing any more, so I will leave it here

I hope I can’t be accused of being baldist, bald…

I’ve just done an average and it’s 47.55! Bear in mind it’s a mix of truck and van drivers, I’ve got two that are 70 ( though one of just does a little drive round a customers site), at the other end two in their 20s, but most hover round the late 40s - early 50s.

I’ve no doubt that there will be a shortage, but as I said from where I am, we haven’t experienced one. I know a fellow haulier that couldn’t get an agency driver for love nor money over Glos way and that wasn’t even Xmas time. If I was to write an ad for a driver, then it would probably get a poor response as it doesn’t sound good on paper, but fortunately people hear about us and consequently we don’t struggle.

Your mistake would be to write an honest advert. Even for a good job it’d never stand against the sweeping fights of fancy offered by some agencies.

Sent from my GT-S7275R using Tapatalk

[albion]

Franglais:
Your mistake would be to write an honest advert. Even for a good job it’d never stand against the sweeping fights of fancy offered by some agencies.

Sent from my GT-S7275R using Tapatalk

Can’t beat 'em, join 'em…

Vacancy for Class 1 or as we call them Class Exceptional Valued Colleagues, to drive the beautiful roads of Europe, stopping in stunning locations with enough spare time thrown in to visit local places of interest. As an experience professional, we offer £105.00 an hour for every hour*. To ease the burden, we give you a second driver, so should you get tired or bored, you have another Exceptional Valued Colleague to assist you. All our customers are vetted before hand on several indices, toilet quality, management personality, the helpfulness of the forkie and who retains possession of the keys, anyone scoring less than 99% doesn’t make the customer grade.

• Except on days beginning with an S, T or W)

That’ll have them calling in by the dozen Franglais!

[rjan]

albion:

bald:

albion:
Don’t know if it was you or someone else said we look at things from their own radius, so from mine, there isn’t one, because we don’t even advertise, it’s all recommendation. And we aren’t on the face of it, the most appealing company to work for.

Just one question, how old is your average driver ?
I remember being a thread asking most people on here how old they are, and most are over 40, I even think most are over 50.
So that means that within a few years a massive amount of drivers will retire, and while there is new blood coming into the industry, they do not compensate for the people leaving.

If I compare to our firm, 80 percent of our drivers and staff are 55 and older, with only 5 percent younger then 30.

Some companies will never have a shortage, because of wages, work and material, but within a few years some companies will have a shortage.
All those manufacturers like Volvo, Scania, Mercedes and others are experimenting with platooning and driverless vehicles for a reason…

albion:
Though I’m with David H, I’ll be a bald woman arguing over a comb if I continue.

As my name already suggests…, I will not risk losing any more, so I will leave it here

I hope I can’t be accused of being baldist, bald…

I’ve just done an average and it’s 47.55! Bear in mind it’s a mix of truck and van drivers, I’ve got two that are 70 ( though one of just does a little drive round a customers site), at the other end two in their 20s, but most hover round the late 40s - early 50s.

I’ve no doubt that there will be a shortage, but as I said from where I am, we haven’t experienced one. I know a fellow haulier that couldn’t get an agency driver for love nor money over Glos way and that wasn’t even Xmas time. If I was to write an ad for a driver, then it would probably get a poor response as it doesn’t sound good on paper, but fortunately people hear about us and consequently we don’t struggle.

If one was struggling to recruit (I know you are not) but felt the job couldn’t be represented well on paper, the simplest way to recruit would probably be to be frank about the terms offered, invite drivers to simply come and have a look around and try the job out, and hire the first acceptable candidate on the spot. Which is not dissimilar to how small employers behaved in the past, before a culture of fussiness took hold.

It can be remarkably minor things that, because of their persistence and continual presence in the work, change the character of a job. A sticky curtain, a knackered wagon, a silly supervisor, a 30 minute wait every morning to be handed your keys (with no chairs). And on the other positive side of the balance, machinery that is always in working order, good organisation where things work like clockwork, a good craic, and so on.

Many struggle to recruit because their reputation does precede them, and it is a poor one. One firm fairly local to me (employing about 5 or 10 drivers I reckon) has had several thousand percent turnover in the last decade (including multiple replacements of their entire site staff and transport managers), and I hear they struggle to find people. The reason is because at one time they were bent as a banana, they have already turned over the entire local workforce that would be available to them, and everyone’s got long memories, whereas they have lost their institutional memory and the current bosses scratch their heads why they can’t get candidates. “There must be a grave shortage”, I suspect they say.

Other small employers who have no special appeal on headline pay or conditions and are maybe intending to hire one new employee, expect to advertise for several weeks, interview 30 candidates (refusing out-of-hours or weekend interviews for those who already have jobs, forcing them to book holidays or make dishonest excuses with their existing employer), complete 10 pages of forms, and wait another week before making a decision or offering a start to anyone - and this is before the driver has had a chance to see the job - and then wonder they can’t get anybody to go through the mill. This approach doesn’t just inflict it’s own self-defeating hardships on the candidates it would like to attract, but it signals (indeed smacks of) unrealistic expectations.

Indeed, many bosses turn to these approaches precisely because they’ve had their fingers burnt in the past with guys who have started on Monday and have thrown in their notice by Wednesday afternoon, and then double-down on trying to find that needle-in-a-haystack employee who is willing to tolerate what those who have previously left would not.

The bureaucracy of larger employers is often adopted as a pretension by smaller employers, and that too is off-putting. Larger employers used to have the pay, conditions, maybe a training scheme, and solid job security as the prize for successful candidates, and they typically have a large number of positions to offer as part of a bureaucratic recruitment campaign, without undue fussiness or excessive ratios of applicants to actual positions. If a large employer has 50 skilled positions to fill, he will be lucky if he gets 50 ready-made applicants unless he is sufficiently strong to poach from competitors, and in most cases will have to turn to internal promotion and backfilling, deliver training, or adapt the role to candidates of moderate calibre or to a common denominator of candidate expectations.

Any small employer that gets more than two or three applicants for a single position involving any skill or experience, is probably dealing with a huge market surplus. Any employer that gets no applicants for a single position involving skill or experience, is simply not making a realistic offer in his marketplace (and his firm may in fact be too financially weak to sustain any additional recruitment).

[albion]

Rjan:
If one was struggling to recruit (I know you are not) but felt the job couldn’t be represented well on paper, the simplest way to recruit would probably be to be frank about the terms offered, invite drivers to simply come and have a look around and try the job out, and hire the first acceptable candidate on the spot. Which is not dissimilar to how small employers behaved in the past, before a culture of fussiness took hold.

It can be remarkably minor things that, because of their persistence and continual presence in the work, change the character of a job. A sticky curtain, a knackered wagon, a silly supervisor, a 30 minute wait every morning to be handed your keys (with no chairs). And on the other positive side of the balance, machinery that is always in working order, good organisation where things work like clockwork, a good craic, and so on.

Many struggle to recruit because their reputation does precede them, and it is a poor one. One firm fairly local to me (employing about 5 or 10 drivers I reckon) has had several thousand percent turnover in the last decade (including multiple replacements of their entire site staff and transport managers), and I hear they struggle to find people. The reason is because at one time they were bent as a banana, they have already turned over the entire local workforce that would be available to them, and everyone’s got long memories, whereas they have lost their institutional memory and the current bosses scratch their heads why they can’t get candidates. “There must be a grave shortage”, I suspect they say.

Other small employers who have no special appeal on headline pay or conditions and are maybe intending to hire one new employee, expect to advertise for several weeks, interview 30 candidates (refusing out-of-hours or weekend interviews for those who already have jobs, forcing them to book holidays or make dishonest excuses with their existing employer), complete 10 pages of forms, and wait another week before making a decision or offering a start to anyone - and this is before the driver has had a chance to see the job - and then wonder they can’t get anybody to go through the mill. This approach doesn’t just inflict it’s own self-defeating hardships on the candidates it would like to attract, but it signals (indeed smacks of) unrealistic expectations.

Indeed, many bosses turn to these approaches precisely because they’ve had their fingers burnt in the past with guys who have started on Monday and have thrown in their notice by Wednesday afternoon, and then double-down on trying to find that needle-in-a-haystack employee who is willing to tolerate what those who have previously left would not.

The bureaucracy of larger employers is often adopted as a pretension by smaller employers, and that too is off-putting. Larger employers used to have the pay, conditions, maybe a training scheme, and solid job security as the prize for successful candidates, and they typically have a large number of positions to offer as part of a bureaucratic recruitment campaign, without undue fussiness or excessive ratios of applicants to actual positions. If a large employer has 50 skilled positions to fill, he will be lucky if he gets 50 ready-made applicants unless he is sufficiently strong to poach from competitors, and in most cases will have to turn to internal promotion and backfilling, deliver training, or adapt the role to candidates of moderate calibre or to a common denominator of candidate expectations.

Any small employer that gets more than two or three applicants for a single position involving any skill or experience, is probably dealing with a huge market surplus. Any employer that gets no applicants for a single position involving skill or experience, is simply not making a realistic offer in his marketplace (and his firm may in fact be too financially weak to sustain any additional recruitment).

So in a nutshell, whatever you do, you’re stuffed.

It’s hard to put in an ad, we know what it’s like to drive because we’ve done it, we are pretty easy going and mostly people stay.

[bald]

albion:
Vacancy for Class 1 or as we call them Class Exceptional Valued Colleagues, to drive the beautiful roads of Europe, stopping in stunning locations with enough spare time thrown in to visit local places of interest. As an experience professional, we offer £105.00 an hour for every hour*. To ease the burden, we give you a second driver, so should you get tired or bored, you have another Exceptional Valued Colleague to assist you. All our customers are vetted before hand on several indices, toilet quality, management personality, the helpfulness of the forkie and who retains possession of the keys, anyone scoring less than 99% doesn’t make the customer grade.

• Except on days beginning with an S, T or W)

That is me out working for you, I would never give my, sorry, give your keys to somebody else.
Otherwise i would love to work for you, but only on mondays and fridays.
Oh, and only 99 % scoring on customer grade ?
This advert is still way to honest.

My company never advertised, and I think you dont have to, either.
Mouth to mouth adverts between drivers are a far better way to get drivers. Drivers will only recommend other drivers who will fit in.

[rjan]

albion:

Rjan:
[…]

So in a nutshell, whatever you do, you’re stuffed.

It’s hard to put in an ad, we know what it’s like to drive because we’ve done it, we are pretty easy going and mostly people stay.

You’re not stuffed though, are you?

Your good reputation precedes you, and that’s giving you no troubles with recruitment and retention. Those with a bad reputation - which is probably the majority of firms looking for drivers in the market at any one moment - are feeling the heat.

Those firms with no reputation to precede them but who run a good operation, will not be suffering from the poor retention that vexes the bad firms, and they will find new drivers directly by maintaining a good and realistic headline offer, by encouraging their current workforce to put the feelers out, and by taking on realistic candidates without being fussy or bureaucratic.

The problem many otherwise good firms face, is that they have reasonable conditions and good retention, but they have a ■■■■■■■■■ of drivers who are accepting an unusually low and unrealistic rate of pay, and these firms find that when these drivers leave (for whatever reason) or they want to take on additional drivers, they cannot recruit again at those rates - and the answer in the long term will be that wages have to go up and become realistic.

[gasgas]

More generally, employers don’t seem to realise that reputation counts.

I worked for a company which had an aggressive hire 'em, fire 'em sales team manager. People would be engaged on promises on huge earnings, choice of cars etc. They never lasted long…they’d either be sacked for not hitting their (unattainable) targets, or realise that those targets (and thus the promised earnings) could never be attained. We had one lass walk out at lunchtime on her induction day!

But the guy running the sales dept never seemed to learn…until one day he posted his usual sit vac advert and got no responses. Within a week there were empty chairs and unanswered phones in the sales dept

He asked me why…I said he had simply burned through most of the potential recruits in the area already, and the rest knew what the company’s reputation was because they knew people who had worked for him and didn’t want to repeat the experience.

He seemed genuinely surprised…and ironically got sacked himself not long after.

[rjan]

GasGas:
More generally, employers don’t seem to realise that reputation counts.

I worked for a company which had an aggressive hire 'em, fire 'em sales team manager. People would be engaged on promises on huge earnings, choice of cars etc. They never lasted long…they’d either be sacked for not hitting their (unattainable) targets, or realise that those targets (and thus the promised earnings) could never be attained. We had one lass walk out at lunchtime on her induction day!

But the guy running the sales dept never seemed to learn…until one day he posted his usual sit vac advert and got no responses. Within a week there were empty chairs and unanswered phones in the sales dept

He asked me why…I said he had simply burned through most of the potential recruits in the area already, and the rest knew what the company’s reputation was because they knew people who had worked for him and didn’t want to repeat the experience.

He seemed genuinely surprised…and ironically got sacked himself not long after.

The clichéd wisecracks are running through my head like slot machine reels!

[winseer]

“Sales and Marketing” has to be the most soul-destroying job of them all.

You are obliged to lie to everyone about why they need to buy your product, lie about that product’s prospects once the sale is made, and then side-step any future “after sales” issues that might put a dent in the salesperson’s commissions.

“Extendeded Warrentries” for example, are a fiddle enough - but you then try to claim on them when something goes wrong, even within the original warrantry period! Like making an insurance claim, the opening arguments of the insurer will always be something like "I’m sorry sir, you’re not actually covered for that. You ARE covered for damage of less than £75 though, subject to your excess of course.

FFS that means these shysters have done everything in their power to ensure the money only flows in one direction.

I’ve just been offered a discount on a new item, IF I take out the extended warrantry, which I don’t want. SO… I accept it, make the first installment payment (warrantry is seperate from the main purchase) - and then cancel the installments at my bank’s end. Have I done anything wrong? Possession is nine-tenths of the law. I’ve had firms try and bust me for defaulint so-called “Agreements” to buy their crap in the past, such as “FreeView” which I cancelled when it turned out to not be free for the channels I was promised, but never got. They sent me a bill, threatened me with court action, and finally when ignored all their letters - trashed my credit rating, when I hadn’t borrowed any money from them in the first place. I took back control, and the consequences of me doing thus - are that I cannot borrow money. BIG deal! I live within my means, but I won’t bloody well be ripped off. If I can’t have it without taking the bum deal, then I’ll take the bum deal, and cancel the subscription, satisfied that they’ll never ever win a case against me in court as to “Why I cannot walk away from this bum deal”.

That’s how we should deal with “Brexit” now, IMHO.

Just default all our obligations beyond “paying for stuff in transit”. We could have stopped paying Brussels on 24th June 2016 - IF our government didn’t mind “defaulting” stuff with impunity, as any Imperialist in this country would surely have done a century ago…

Instead, we continue to pay them the money we promised the NHS on the side of the bus, making the whole thing a lie, hoping that the public will change their mind about Brexit on the whole.

Our politicians cannot be arsed to do Brexit. Even David Davis is NOT getting Brexit done, because he keeps giving away concessions for a whole pile of nothing in return!

Possession is nine-tenths of the law. If we stopped the payments - the EU would be keen to speed up Brexit - because it’s costing them money in MEP’s wages such that they’ll kick all MEPs out of the EU parliement overnight at very least! If we keep on paying the money? - The EU can relax. Take a seat. Kick it down the road forever.

The passage of time works in the EU’s favour all the while we continue to pay.

You CANNOT “Take back control” except by refusing further payment.

I can only assume our politicans are being royally bribed to act thus. It makes no sense that Parliament is 75% in favour of “staying the the EU” UNLESS they are being bribed to act as Traitors to the UK, all the while locking up Nationalists for standing on street corners, telling the truth.

I fear Brexit will never be completed in our lifetimes. We already know that Remainers are waiting for Brexiteers to “Die off” so they can get their second refererndum, and fiddle the result even then.

The question on the ballot paper will be

Do you wish to (1) Raise taxes to 75% to pay for a Hard Brexit Bill or (2) Let’s just forget the whole thing.

Silly thing is, Cameron could have done this in the first instance. He clearly didn’t want or expect a majority win in the 2015 general election.

Even now - the EU could make a knock-out blow by promising UK workers “To cut taxes to 10% for the first £100k of earnings, and raise taxes to 75% for all earnings above that” - to get us to vote for the EU to be our overlords forever. “Hearts and Minds”?

There’s no limit to how much QE could be done to facilitiate this. That the EU just never bothered trying to bribe the actual public" smacks of their utter contempt OF that public of course.

[rjan]

Winseer:
They sent me a bill, threatened me with court action, and finally when ignored all their letters - trashed my credit rating, when I hadn’t borrowed any money from them in the first place. I took back control, and the consequences of me doing thus - are that I cannot borrow money. BIG deal!

In the long tradition of English kings!

[munchkin]

What’s happened to the working man(person) in the UK?
All through this Brexit sheit the overwhelming tone seems to be slagging off the BBC, Huff post etc. for being left wing. Maybe if drivers had remained a bit more left wing themselves they’d have better T’s and C’s and not be on here moaning about pay every 5mins [emoji6]

Sent from my Redmi 4 using Tapatalk

[franglais]

Munchkin:
What’s happened to the working man(person) in the UK?
All through this Brexit sheit the overwhelming tone seems to be slagging off the BBC, Huff post etc. for being left wing. Maybe if drivers had remained a bit more left wing themselves they’d have better T’s and C’s and not be on here moaning about pay every 5mins [emoji6]

Sent from my Redmi 4 using Tapatalk

Anyone who has been sucked into the world view of the Murdoch press will view everyone even moderately centrist as a “looney lefty”. The way the press has normalised right wing union bashing etc is quite remarkable. A couple of decades of “birds gettin `em out” has had more effect on the political landscape than anything else!

[winseer]

Franglais:

Munchkin:
What’s happened to the working man(person) in the UK?
All through this Brexit sheit the overwhelming tone seems to be slagging off the BBC, Huff post etc. for being left wing. Maybe if drivers had remained a bit more left wing themselves they’d have better T’s and C’s and not be on here moaning about pay every 5mins [emoji6]

Sent from my Redmi 4 using Tapatalk

Anyone who has been sucked into the world view of the Murdoch press will view everyone even moderately centrist as a “looney lefty”. The way the press has normalised right wing union bashing etc is quite remarkable. A couple of decades of “birds gettin `em out” has had more effect on the political landscape than anything else!

I’ve never been a Leftie, but always agreed with punitive action as being the only kind of Union “Industrial Action” that actually works. Making effective industrial action “Illegal” of course, hamstrung the unions everywhere. Having ballots, and notice periods, and endless demands to go to ACAS means that not only to most strikes not achieve anything - they cost the workers hard cash as well of course.

I’m in favour of Unions only when they have teeth. NOT the Union boss “has teeth” btw. It’s got to be about the members. Yes, that means I’m in favour of wildcat strikes, sabotage, and flying pickets too.

FFS I’m starting to sound like HARD Left now - ain’t I?

[robbo99]

Great to see Corbyn sack that traitor of democracy Smith. That’s one less spoil sport remoaner in the shadow cabinet. The remoaners might now begin to see there ain’t going to be another referendum. The people were given the vote and the people voted…out

[toonsy]

I keep hearing about “the people” but who are they? It’s certainly not me.

Yes I voted remain. No I don’t want another referendum. I just want them to get on with it and hope and pray that I was wrong to vote to stay and that Brexit is a roaring success because we’ll all benefit.

But if it’s not a success then we’re all in the ■■■ ■■■, including “the people”.

And the reality NOBODY KNOWS 100% how it will pan out.

Keep calm and crack on and all that.

[franglais]

toonsy:
I keep hearing about “the people” but who are they? It’s certainly not me.

Yes I voted remain. No I don’t want another referendum. I just want them to get on with it and hope and pray that I was wrong to vote to stay and that Brexit is a roaring success because we’ll all benefit.

But if it’s not a success then we’re all in the ■■■ ■■■, including “the people”.

And the reality NOBODY KNOWS EVEN 10% how it will pan out.

Keep calm and crack on and all that.

Fixed it for ya!

[toonsy]

Franglais:

toonsy:
I keep hearing about “the people” but who are they? It’s certainly not me.

Yes I voted remain. No I don’t want another referendum. I just want them to get on with it and hope and pray that I was wrong to vote to stay and that Brexit is a roaring success because we’ll all benefit.

But if it’s not a success then we’re all in the ■■■ ■■■, including “the people”.

And the reality NOBODY KNOWS EVEN 10% how it will pan out.

Keep calm and crack on and all that.

Fixed it for ya!

Cheers mate