A small whinge of my own after reading Lawrence’s article re Jako.
I was on a very handy weekend agency job for Ceva Crown Paints Hull prior to Christmas. Job was to sometimes shunt a few empty trailers into position for loading, take a load to Crown Darwen, swap/unload then return empty, and perhaps shunt some more empties into position to reload. Never did more than 8 hour shifts.
About 3 weeks before Christmas I got a call from the agency explaining that I had been banned from site, and asking me what had happened.
I was absolutely baffled. I had been on this job for a number of months with no problem, and had also done other jobs for them including double shifting when they were short of drivers, thus saving them money and problems.
After a few telephone calls between the agency and Ceva it became apparent that I had been banned for refusing to shunt some empty trailers after my shift the previous Sunday.
This was, of course, nonsense. I had never refused to carry out any tasks requested by the customer, and highlighted to my agency times when I’d gone over and above the call of duty, to show it was not in my character to refuse instructions.
My only explanation was that of a case of mistaken identity.
I had always got on well will the managers and supervisors on site, and even suffered a head injury when an insecure curtain pole hit me when I was pointing out a defective tyre on a stand trailer I had noticed, that I just shrugged of as “One of those things”.
My agency have “said” they have been trying to resolve the issue even up to now but, because it is some manager at head office who has to lift the ban, are unable to sort it.
Either this story is correct, or the agency cant be arsed to rock the boat and are keeping Ceva sweet.
Either way, it really peeves me that, on the say so of some forky, who is actually mistaken, a hardworking honest fella can lose an income stream through no fault of his own, with absolutely no recourse whatsoever, and that, If the agency are to be believed, this all lies in the hands of a little Hitler in another part of the country who has no working relationship with me, and is far too busy to be dealing with whether my ban should be lifted or not!!