Getting a full time job - how? (class 2)

Three problems. The first is that it’s difficult to define a minimum wage, or a living wage, because a single man has different outgoings than a family man.

Second, as wages rise so does the cost of living. If you’re on £10ph and a cup of coffee costs £3, you’re no better off if you’re on £12ph and the same cup of coffee now costs £5. As the cost of production rises and that includes labour, so does the final product. Employers will not take a profit loss, they’ll pass it onto the consumer.

Third, supply and demand. If there’s an excess of labour, wages will stagnate or fall as the labour market too is a buyer and sellers-market. If you’re the only plumber in town you’re going to make a lot more than if there are a hundred others that will charge less than you.

If you tax too highly employers will outsource, those who can will leave for elsewhere, or go bankrupt. The ‘Tax the rich’ idea was already tried in the 70s and failed. If you chase away businesses with high taxation, you also chase away the jobs they provide. So it’s a kind of double edged sword.

When truck drivers talk of stagnating wages they’re not talking of 50, or even 30 years ago. They’re talking about 15 and they’re right. That’s when the cheap East European drivers started to flood in. Remove that and you remove the competition, but we can’t.

If you get a HIAB - you’ll end up not being offered any other kind of work, at least on agency.

Not good - if one holds a C+E licence, and only considered picking up a few C2 HIAB shifts as a “stepping stone”…

I think that our man should print off some business cards with a picture of himself, contact details and a list of his qualifications. He could leave his card with any office that he delivers to and just get his name known. Vista print do a fairly good deal or other suppliers are available. I am nearing retirement and didn’t know that it is so difficult to find a driving job.

Grandpa:
Three problems. The first is that it’s difficult to define a minimum wage, or a living wage, because a single man has different outgoings than a family man.

Possibly, but we are not specifying the wage itself, only that it will not be beneath a reasonable minimum.

A social policy is not invalid just because it does not meet every eventuality or individual circumstance - for example, we do not refuse to treat rickets and cholera, just because we cannot always successfully treat cancer.

Meeting the living costs of children is a separate issue, probably most precisely met by taxation and fixed transfers to parents - this also ensures that people who are not parents, still share the costs of social reproduction. We already have systems such as these to some extent.

Second, as wages rise so does the cost of living. If you’re on £10ph and a cup of coffee costs £3, you’re no better off if you’re on £12ph and the same cup of coffee now costs £5. As the cost of production rises and that includes labour, so does the final product. Employers will not take a profit loss, they’ll pass it onto the consumer.

But the cost of living does not increase faster than the wage rises.

In practice when some workers take pay cuts, the effect is not prices that drop commensurately - we know this as wagon drivers, where real-terms reductions in wages and pensions have not been accompanied by reductions in shop prices, petrol, rents, training costs, or anything else.

Even if the worker worked for free, the reality is that the landlord would still attempt to charge him rent, the retailer would still attempt to charge him profit, and so on.

Another aspect is that when some workers take pay cuts, often that is not used to drive down prices, but soaked up by other workers - for example, the manager who forces down wages on the shop floor, will demand higher wages for having done so, he won’t follow suit and lower his own wages.

So accepting pay cuts in practice simply subsidises the lifestyle of those whose incomes are not cut - either because they don’t work for wages (bosses, landlords, shareholders, etc.), or because they belong to a group of workers whose wages are not being cut (senior managers, bankers and financiers, etc.).

Third, supply and demand. If there’s an excess of labour, wages will stagnate or fall as the labour market too is a buyer and sellers-market. If you’re the only plumber in town you’re going to make a lot more than if there are a hundred others that will charge less than you.

Indeed, and that is a fault in the market mechanism, because it suggests that whenever there is a single extra worker available, wages will drop to zero until that surplus “leaves the market”.

In practice, the Tories prevent workers leaving the market by eroding social security and hassling those on benefits. So the ultimate logic of this is that a single surplus worker will cause market wages to drop to zero until somebody starves to death (by which time the majority will also be moribund and impoverished).

That’s why we have to intervene in the marketplace, and ensure that bosses are obliged to pay decent wages to those who actually do the work, even under conditions of surplus labour being available. If we do not, then as workers all we do is enrich the boss and impoverish ourselves every time a surplus worker is available.

We also have to intervene to ensure that teh capital value of workers and the initial investment in their production is recognised.

We cannot allow bosses to starve workers out of the market, because doing so not only destroys the productive capacity and the massive cost and years of investment made in their upbringing to begin with (who may be useful at a later time, when labour is short relative to demand), but the impoverishment of workers who are not quite starved to death on any particular occasion still impairs the reproduction of workers which is currently ongoing - when children end up with empty bellies in school, when parents start to become neglectful because they are too involved in and exhausted by struggling to survive themselves, when families and relationships split up under financial stresses, and so on.

If you tax too highly employers will outsource, those who can will leave for elsewhere, or go bankrupt. The ‘Tax the rich’ idea was already tried in the 70s and failed. If you chase away businesses with high taxation, you also chase away the jobs they provide. So it’s a kind of double edged sword.

The rich didn’t leave for elsewhere in the 70s, because there were capital controls. They were only abolished by Thatcher (whose rule did bring economic chaos, including a record and unsurpassed unemployment rate in 1981).

The problem in the 70s was the perception that Britain was starting to fall behind its European peers on account of second-rate management and lack of investment.

That being said, the simple remedy to “outsourcing” (I assume you mean offshoring) is to make sure the rich cannot take capital or machinery away, and ensure that if they try to export back in, having paid a pittance in wages to third world workers, then they are subject to tariffs which disgorges all the profit they would have gained by the scheme.

When truck drivers talk of stagnating wages they’re not talking of 50, or even 30 years ago. They’re talking about 15 and they’re right. That’s when the cheap East European drivers started to flood in. Remove that and you remove the competition, but we can’t.

But as we saw on the other thread with farm labour, the reality is that when the Eastern European do stop coming, the Tories just fling the doors open to Ukrainians and Russians instead.

Rjan:
I found what he said easy enough to understand.
.

Of course you did, it almost goes without saying in fact.

If using twenty words where one would suffice was a prerequisite for being a lorry driver your phones would be ringing off the hook with job offers! :wink:

the maoster:

Rjan:
I found what he said easy enough to understand.
.

Of course you did, it almost goes without saying in fact.

If using twenty words where one would suffice was a prerequisite for being a lorry driver your phones would be ringing off the hook with job offers! :wink:

Quite! :laughing:

:smiley: :smiley: :smiley: fair play, taken in the manner it was intended.

alamcculloch:
I think that our man should print off some business cards with a picture of himself, contact details and a list of his qualifications. He could leave his card with any office that he delivers to and just get his name known. Vista print do a fairly good deal or other suppliers are available. I am nearing retirement and didn’t know that it is so difficult to find a driving job.

That’s what I did and it worked for me. I design my own and this time I went for a minimalist design, matt background, UV spot, triple plated. Under £30 for 50 at vista. (Back & Front). They don’t look as good with images, but a lot better as cards.

Winseer:
If you get a HIAB - you’ll end up not being offered any other kind of work, at least on agency.

To be fair the agencies ain’t exactly awash with international trunking work.

Although some naive fool might just possibly find one with something like this photo on the office wall and then sign up putting the Hiab qualification down on the form.Because it seems like a good idea at the time in being a way in.Blimey maybe I should get a job as an agency recruiter. :smiling_imp: :laughing: :laughing:

image.shutterstock.com/z/stock- … 438820.jpg

Grandpa:

alamcculloch:
a list of his qualifications.

That’s what I did and it worked for me. I design my own and this time I went for a minimalist design, matt background, UV spot, triple plated. Under £30 for 50 at vista. (Back & Front). They don’t look as good with images, but a lot better as cards.

Hope you remembered to put down keen on doing and have plenty of multi drop and building deliveries experience and bonus points for Hiab.Because that’s what employers want in this buyers’ market. :smiling_imp:

Hope you remembered to put down keen on doing and have plenty of multi drop and building deliveries experience and bonus points for Hiab.Because that’s what employers want in this buyers’ market. :smiling_imp:

Never done Hiab, tried multidrop and didn’t like it, limited tramping exp’ and make it very clear I’m after trunking, pref nights.

Had a C2 job delivering carpets to and from Kidderminster back in 2012… They are like Laura Ashley with a mixture of Drawbar and C2 work. The runs were straight there and back each night, 9 hours round trip monday-friday 19:00-04:00 shift. The firm was called “Victoria Carpets”, but I would imagine that other carpet firms - have a similar overnight delivery system. I only did the job via agency to cover for the full timer’s holidays around Easter and Christmas time - but it is a straight-forward job, and regular as clockwork - if that is what you are looking for.

Grandpa:

Hope you remembered to put down keen on doing and have plenty of multi drop and building deliveries experience and bonus points for Hiab.Because that’s what employers want in this buyers’ market. :smiling_imp:

Never done Hiab, tried multidrop and didn’t like it, limited tramping exp’ and make it very clear I’m after trunking, pref nights.

Blimey what a surprise.You and Juddian think it’s an employers’ market and therefore the OP should accept what the employers are calling for to ‘earn his spurs’ ?.( Multi Drop and local building materials deliveries using a Hiab etc ).

While having the nerve to moan at me for advising him to avoid and to look for the type of work which you’re also hoping to avoid and to look for.

Oh wait you just want him to be a mug so as to leave more opportunities for you.Who would have thought it. :unamused:

As for the Hiab work think multi drop but even more boring and local and mostly all in busy urban areas surrounded by parked cars and suicidal pedestrians.Being ‘asked’ to park a truck in impossibly silly places and to drop impossible loads into equally impossible silly places.With the bonus that when you get back to the yard ( very frequently because you don’t need to drive far ) you’ll be ‘asked’ to ‘help out’ with the yard labouring work shifting and stacking heavy building stuff etc,just in case you thought using the Hiab out on the streets was too easy.

Look on the bright side you might be able to go a little bit further up the road if you’re on scaffolding/shuttering deliveries and collections.But you’ll end up having to do even more heavy labouring,than in the yard on the Hiab job,when you get there.Might as well go for the multi drop retail deliveries job after all. :unamused: :laughing:

As for me it’s clear that my argument is that we’ve got a Mexican Standoff going on between drivers who rightly think that the object of an HGV is to make it more economically viable to shift a lot of stuff over a long distance.As opposed to operators who think that the object is to be able to carry more local deliveries than they can fit in/put on a van.Or other jobs which in reality are just labouring jobs which involve the use of a truck and a labourer with an HGV licence. :bulb:

Winseer:
I only did the job to cover for the full timers’ holidays around Easter and Christmas time - but it is a straight-forward job, and regular as clockwork - if that is what you are looking for.

Not exactly the same thing then as being offered loads of it on the agency because they can’t find any ‘full timer’ who wants it.Or for that matter them looking for/needing full time drivers regardless.

My preferred jobs are night trunking with people like Sainsbury’s, Asda or BT. They aren’t knock on door jobs, but if your face fits they’re good earners, even on agencies who I previously work for. They’re long shifts, but that’s what I want. The good thing about the company’s I mentioned (and similarly the big nationals) are that the contracts never end. No waiting, no problems; the same RDCs are already expecting you every night, same time, same faces … Anyone still believe in the King of the road, Yorkie bar stuff? You do the job and go home and if you can make an easy job a lasting one, all the better. :slight_smile: