the maoster:
Speaking of furlough I heard a twist today; not drivers per se but my g/f works for a very large car sales group as does her daughter who is a regional accountant for them. My g/f has been furloughed on 80% whereas her daughter is working from home on 100% salary. My g/f’s boss told her he was going to bring a lap top around so she could work from home. I told her to say absolutely NOT unless she was going back onto 100% salary.
Anyhoo it turns out that their HQ had a visit from HMRC today who seized computers to check which (if any) furloughed workers have been sending and responding to work e mails!
I said to Winseer about 300 pages ago that any Co who tried to fiddle this would get nailed to a tree, it appears that I was correct.
I’ll await the inevitable reports that a similar “investigation” has come about for those agencies who have selected some for furlough, and not others then, seemingly based around how much it would cost them to do: Big Bucks worker like Moi - gets thrown out for being “too expensive”, whilst 9-5 casual bods - get taken down and paid, based on their average weekly being rather less than yours truly’s has been.
If they are paying some then it is almost certain that a grant has been claimed somewhere. It would be madness to furlough anyone at all - if no money was ever to be claimed anywhere… You’d just lay people off to suit, and keep that posture going until the end of the lockdown at least. To keep it legit then, the firm would have to furlough a select few out of their own pockets, only to find that later in the year (most likely) that the loss of goodwill caused by being far too fussy in their “bums on seats” operation - leaves them short of drivers and capacity should there ever be this ‘V’ shaped recovery the government speaks of… I’ve yet to return to an agency once I’ve left. I have no power to enforce change on anyone, and hence I can only ever vote with my feet. Getting myself ahead of the curve again - requires that I both take a view on the length of the lockdown, and then make a business judgement on which firms are going to be having a hard time because they are totally under-capacity to deal with any upturn following that, regardless of speed.
My current thinking is that former users of many agency drivers such as Supermarkets and Courier firms - will be unwilling to ever “gamble”, and will find that all they can attract with their decent, but clearly resented going rates at such venues - are the “9 points OK” crowd, who may or may not jump through any hoops required before being hurled into the FT abuser pit that is working at such venues these days.
Once upon a time it was classed as a snazzy career move for a driver to deliberately leave full time to come back on agency…
But nowadays - such thinking is clearly heresy, with Full Timers doing whatever they can to get rid of any upstarts earning more money than they did doing the same job, rather than contemplating their own risk-averse nature in turning down exit packages of their own whilst they had the chance…
Mark my words - if you think your full time contracts gives you the right to never be buggered about like I have been in due course, - is just a matter of time before the largest firms start defaulting things like Pensions, Holidays, and even upholding the same hourly rates as previous years, - before long. THAT is the nature of the Deflationary Crash we now face in this country, long after any lock-down has ceased.
The big winners in the Post-Coronavirus workplace - will be those who dodged the bullets (which I clearly didn’t) and/or got ahead of the curve (which I now intend to do the moment I can move on)
The best place for me to find employment in the future - will clearly be somewhere (to use everyone else’s own terminology for me here) “Where they don’t know he’s a c…t” the moment I turn up there…
There it is.
I’ll know within about 4 weeks if I’ve succeeded or not. If it works, I’ll let you all know that I’ve found the answer, but I won’t brag on here about what that answer was… No one can moan at me anymore that way, nor gain assistance/advice on the subject neither. It won’t be a case of “wishing me luck” because the best way to avoid flying bullets - is to not turn up at that particular battlefield, and then blend into the background so enemy intel can’t bugger me around any longer. 
I guess I’ve finally caught up with the main bulk of you lot out there that always argued “Agencies are all dishonest” when it comes down to it.
“Dishonesty” isn’t illegal though, and that’s what smarts.
Let’s see who’s still laughing by Christmas, because if I’m correct in my economic forecasts, we’ve already had the last agency Christmas run-up as of Pre Last December’s election… How under-wealming that was, too with premium rates not kicking in until december and not even lasting out the end of that same month… A warning if ever there was one that the future for agencies in general - looks rather bleak now.
