Was just looking through the jobcentre vacancies relevant to my area …class one and two work paying the national minimum wage. Doesn’t really take much to work out why there’s a lack of new/ younger drivers coming into the industry when that’s your reward for spending thousands of pounds to get a licence …
markoc:
Was just looking through the jobcentre vacancies relevant to my area …class one and two work paying the national minimum wage. Doesn’t really take much to work out why there’s a lack of new/ younger drivers coming into the industry when that’s your reward for spending thousands of pounds to get a licence …
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It’s not that bad on mainland UK.
£9 / £10 is readily available in most places.
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Dieseldoforme:
markoc:
Was just looking through the jobcentre vacancies relevant to my area …class one and two work paying the national minimum wage. Doesn’t really take much to work out why there’s a lack of new/ younger drivers coming into the industry when that’s your reward for spending thousands of pounds to get a licence ….
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It’s not that bad on mainland UK.£9 / £10 is readily available in most places.
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No where I am £7.50-£8ph is the norm straight through
NewLad:
Where I am £7.50 - £8ph is the norm straight through
But last August you were telling us about Co-op Nottingham and you said :
NewLad:
Cat C drivers get 29k for a 48 hr week.Cat C+E get around 31k for a 48 hr week.
Dieseldoforme:
NewLad:
Where I am £7.50 - £8ph is the norm straight throughBut last August you were telling us about Co-op Nottingham and you said :
NewLad:
Cat C drivers get 29k for a 48 hr week.Cat C+E get around 31k for a 48 hr week.
And your point is■■?
I was made redundant in May and relocated to Spalding so like I said £7.50 - £8 ph round where I am 
NewLad:
And your point is ■■?
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That no one in their right mind would go looking for
well paid work in Lincolnshire.
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markoc:
Was just looking through the jobcentre vacancies relevant to my area …class one and two work paying the national minimum wage. Doesn’t really take much to work out why there’s a lack of new/ younger drivers coming into the industry when that’s your reward for spending thousands of pounds to get a licence …
I think you’ll find its opposite, there’s an abundance of new drivers , young & old because one of the retraining packages offered to people after redundancy is an hgv course, , all these new drivers want to work & wilp start on minimum wage to gain experience in the hope that it will lead to a golden ticket job of £40k+ a year , trouble is employers know there is a load of people willing to work for minimum wage so why do they need to pay you more ? There is a sad attitude of like it or lump it with employers & remember they don’t have to pay you any more than minimum for the job , there’s no law that says an hgv driver must earn x amount an hour , at the moment I’m doing class 2 hiab builders merchants work , its a tough difficult job , the money is poor , I’m always looking for something else but wages are kept low across the board because there will always be drivers who will do it , I had to take it coz there was nothing else, the minimum wage is designed to keep you in a trap , earn to much to get help but not enough to live ! The local hgv training centre here is busier than ever , if I kick up a fuss about pay they would see me go rather than pay more , they’ll just put the next one in & the story continues …
I do earn more than minimum wage by the way but like I said they could replace me in an hour with somebody on minimum…
Dieseldoforme:
NewLad:
And your point is ■■?.
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That no one in their right mind would go looking for
well paid work in Lincolnshire.
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Unles you Polish 
NewLad:
No where I am £7.50-£8ph is the norm straight through
Norfolk is the same
Dieseldoforme:
NewLad:
And your point is ■■?.
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That no one in their right mind would go looking for
well paid work in Lincolnshire.
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I didn’t move out here for money, I moved here so my kids and my wife can be near her family, I earn decent money for the area, but there are very very few £10ph jobs around here, unless you go the LTD Co route then there is loads. There are good jobs but they don’t get advertised. Life isn’t all about money, I take home more now than I ever have but I have to do the hours and my family are a lot happier, my kids are happy and the schools are great what more do I need?
Oh and I get weekends off, never had that before.
Work is low payed and hard to find at the moment, but almost everyone I knows working harder an longer for less now, apart from the some public sector workers I know 
Just have to wait it out and hope the country sorts its self out. It’s an employers market now, but I can remember when it was an employees market, I can remember a time I could get a choice of jobs after walking into any old agency and be working the same day if I wanted. Employees did muck and ■■■■ about employers a lot in those days simply cause thay could. It’s just the shoes on the other foot now.
Any firm that pays the national minimum wage is the scum of the earth.
It’s slave labour, and as for anyone that works for that pitence is as stupid as stupid can be.
The NMW simply holds back economic growth, The Government should never have introduced this precedent.
A company will sell goods to people, Yet it’s own employees can’t afford to buy those goods. How [zb]ing stupid is that?
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Oh and I get weekends off, never had that before.
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I would love to have weekends off !!! 
I remember the days before the recession, influx of eastern euros & Digi cards when you could do a grand a week on the agency without breaking a sweat, well maybe a bit of sweat! 
Just this morning on the government info service ( BBC) somebody was trumpeting the fact that they were bringing back manufacturing to the UK!
Didn’t say that now wages have been artificially driven down they can afford it again because the greedy low paid economies in the Far East were getting too expensive and their workers wanted a better standard of living - how dare they?!
They also said that as the economy was on the mend things were looking up for business again and the UK needed to be ready to meet demand!
Looks like the next ‘cycle’ of boom and bust begins and those that have don’t give a toss about those that don’t have - don’t expect a wages boom anytime soon.
limeyphil:
Any firm that pays the national minimum wage is the scum of the earth.
It’s slave labour, and as for anyone that works for that pitence is as stupid as stupid can be.
The NMW simply holds back economic growth, The Government should never have introduced this precedent.
A company will sell goods to people, Yet it’s own employees can’t afford to buy those goods. How [zb]ing stupid is that?
if its a case of pay the mortgage or lose your house you dont have any option, especially when work is thin on the ground…not ideal but everyone has bills to pay!
Firms that pay low enough to push people onto benefits are effectively robbing the taxpayer with government blessing.
“Making work pay” would have worked better if minimum wage was set for each different sector of society, thus maintaining differentials, and encouraging people to “go out and better themselves”.
All that rubbish over “If minimum wage rose a quid, we’d have to lay off tens of thousands of staff”… What kind of anti-social threat is that? Is any major firm REALLY going to go bust if they were forced to pay a decent living wage?
The corporate tax/employers contributions system could even be changed so that employers cannot offset for tax the first minimum wage amount from staff pay, but a sliding down scale of offsetting more and more of a worker’s pay once the minimum wage is breached. Eg. NIC contributions for someone on £7.00ph would be a much higher percentage (say £1/hour/each) whereas staff on £20ph would only have seen their NICs rise to £2ph/each thus tripling the wage only doubles the NICs in absolute terms, but as a percentage, it drops from around 14% to 5% of gross pay…
Thus, flood the place with cheap labour - and you’ll pay for it as a firm! It’s not even anti-immigrant or any other social group, because if you’re an outsider with the qualifications, you’ll qualify for one of the proper-paid jobs, whereas untrained unskilled staff would be a liability to the firm, which in turn encourages them to either not bother employing them, or put them in an intensive training programme such as an apprentiship from day one, to raise them above minimum wages at the earliest opportunity… 
Talk to your local MP…
koikeeper:
if its a case of pay the mortgage or lose your house you dont have any option, especially when work is thin on the ground…not ideal but everyone has bills to pay!
Sorry but I do not subscribe to this “excuse”.
I too have a family to feed and a very large mortgage but I still, even through the recession, never sold my arse even though it got very close to me losing my house. It is because drivers will cave in to desperation that we are taken advantage of to such a level. If more of us said no then rates would simply have to rise accordingly but employers know that drivers will bow to pressure and work for ■■■■ all.
We could all be on a decent wage but sadly the only people stopping us from being on fantastic wages our ourselves by taking the same attitude as you. Suppose that’s life but some of us don’t accept it and fortunately for me it paid off.
jrt:
Work is low payed and hard to find at the moment, but almost everyone I knows working harder an longer for less now, apart from the some public sector workers I know
IIRC It has always been the case that “Public Sector” wages have been based on what the “Private Sector” earn.
jrt:
Just have to wait it out and hope the country sorts its self out. It’s an employers market now, but I can remember when it was an employees market, I can remember a time I could get a choice of jobs after walking into any old agency and be working the same day if I wanted. Employees did muck and ■■■■ about employers a lot in those days simply cause thay could. It’s just the shoes on the other foot now.
Forget all the bs Employer/government propaganda. If you haven’t already, join a Union and help strengthen your “Bargaining power” to rectify this situation you mention.
If not “Crack on”.
After all “What have you [all] to lose but your chains”?
Truckbling:
koikeeper:
if its a case of pay the mortgage or lose your house you dont have any option, especially when work is thin on the ground…not ideal but everyone has bills to pay!Sorry but I do not subscribe to this “excuse”.
I too have a family to feed and a very large mortgage but I still, even through the recession, never sold my arse even though it got very close to me losing my house. It is because drivers will cave in to desperation that we are taken advantage of to such a level. If more of us said no then rates would simply have to rise accordingly but employers know that drivers will bow to pressure and work for [zb] all.
We could all be on a decent wage but sadly the only people stopping us from being on fantastic wages our ourselves by taking the same attitude as you. Suppose that’s life but some of us don’t accept it and fortunately for me it paid off.
NAIL, HAMMER, HEAD.
it could be worse,if the minimum wage had not been brought out the scummy companies would be paying 3.50 an hour for some jobs.my first job when leaving school in the 80s was in a plastic moulding company lumping 40 kilo bags of plastic into machines and running em for 80 pence an hour 