ezydriver:
Winseer:
Being 4-on-4-off means you’ll be expected to work a lot of weekends, BUT you only need to spend 4 days holiday rather than 5 to take a full week off.When you take 4 days holiday, you get almost 2 weeks off.
True…True… 
I’ve banged on for years with how good 4on4off is compared to the total pits of “any five from seven”…
What a supreme Irony it would be if the time comes when you can only get “four-on-four-off” on agency, and there are NO full time directly employer jobs that are NOT “Any five from seven”… 
I took a full time “Temp to Perm” job @ Brakes Aylesford in 2015 for example, after I found I liked the artic trunking night job I was already covering on agency…
The other drivers there were working fixed Sunday-Wedneday nights starting around 19:00hrs, and I’d been covering the various jobs there, runs to Thetford, Reading, etc…
BUT on further examination of my contract, it was a Sunday-THURSDAY, and the basis was “Take it or leave it”. My agency work was a bit bitty at the time, so I reluctantly took the job. After all, Five fixed shifts, was slightly better than ANY five - Right?
Then came the “Overtime” options of doing some C2 work, or maybe a run to Tamworth on the Friday…
At first, I got some overtime for working this 6th shift, which bumped up my money occasionally, as these fridays for the first year or so, were quite rare.
Then in the second year, some new managers started, and they starting asking me to come in every other friday, as per the 5-6-5-6 remit…
After a month went by of this, I didn’t get any overtime pay on my month’s end salary.
I put in a complaint, got told by more than one manager “It’ll be corrected in next month’s” but lo and behold, the second month came and went “no overtime pay”.
In the third month, I suddenly got told that I wouldn’t be paid for these fridays (I’d done 4 by this point) because “I was required to make up my only working 36 hours Sunday-Thursday” as an hours make-up, contracted to work 48 hours as I was. This never happened to anyone else on their contracts, and I considered it to be “Contractual Abuse” as I was the only one on this particular contract, already 5 days compared to everyone else’s 4… I got lied to to get me to do this unpaid overtime of course, and then lied to again when I was told it was a glitch at wages, rather than the real reason - they’d not put me in for the hours I’d already worked, and covered it up for as long as they could, before I smelt the rat, and confronted them about it.
I eventually got laid off there before this dispute got resolved, but essentially I got at least 4 shifts of 12 hours overtime stolen from me by my corrupt managers who seemed to think highly of penny-pinching people’s wages whenever they wanted, but didn’t think anything of throwing company money away granting themselves paid sick for turning up to work half-cut on monday mornings, and going straight back home - just as I was handing in my keys from a long sunday night’s drive. I could smell the acetone in the office air, and wading through the knee-deep hypocrisy - stunk rather more than that! I also took four days off extra to my paid holiday entitlement during the time I was there, didn’t get paid for the one day’s sickie, and was going to be disciplined for taking 3 days holiday off, after I’d been told I couldn’t have it after I’d already bloody well booked it! People were also getting sacked all around me for any-old-reasons left,right-and center by that point as well, so I didn’t take it so personally on the unpaid sick as I did on the overtime. Watch out for it in your contacts though people - I suspect that more and more “contracts” are going to omit “Paid Sick” and replace it with expressions like “Sick pay is at manager’s discretion”. Holidays too, even booked ones are "Paid at management’s discretion too, and I’ve not heard of people risking getting sacked for taking UNPAID holiday at ANY time, but that’s the new-look Yank-run Brakes for you. They’ve upped their C2 money to £37k now I see (directly employed) - they must indeed be struggling to get drivers that will put up with the office politik there. Otherwise, I might recommend this outfit as a good place for a “New C2 Pass” to cut their teeth - wouldn’t I?
I’m more wary of such double-standards among managers now, and watch very carefully with my new highly-tuned Paranoia sense if I even suspect people are trying to f— me over all the time. 
Now, I won’t ever take a full time contract again - unless and until it meets my rather fussy high standards.
Fortunately for me, I’m high enough up in pecking order with agency that I can take this stance, without being sent home “The phone doth never to ring” ever again…
Effectively, that makes me “Semi Retired” or “Willfully under-employed”. 
I’ve had 6 shifts cancelled in this past financial year, which are more than made up by the hourly rate uplift, and it is going to take a damned decent contract to ever get me to commit to working any 48 hour week (or more!) ever again by this point.
“I’ve found my niche” after a very bad first year of lockdown, when a larger agency cut me off at the knees, rather than either pay out furlough, or even get me a fresh assignment on the same money elsewhere… All I got offered was Sainsbury’s Darftord for £12ph which required an assessment of me (unpaid) as well, so I told them to stick it, and I’d take my chances doing some directly-employed farm work instead, where at least I could pick my shifts for that same £12ph offer.
Brakes had been purchased by Sysco for around $500,000,000 more than they would have paid had they not been remainers impatient to close the deal…
(The purchase went through days before the pound dropped, which would have cheapened their purchase price already agreed in Sterling, had they thought it through, and considered there was a good risk of the pound dropping whichEVER way the Brexit Referendum vote went… People like George Soros like to bet with a 90%+ chance of winning a coin-flip set-up. He bet on “Remain” and the pound climbing, and cut his losses to <10% of his stake by getting out quick the moment Sunderland didn’t vote as strongly “Remain” as was widely expected…