Its all about reducing cost’s subbies are better and cheaper
Winseer:
I reckon all this subbing is about getting drivers to do the 12-15 hour shifts that the full time staff are not allowed to do anymore…
FFS here you go again spouting the same bollox as always.
You left over 5 years ago and have no idea how things work there.
Nowhere have I ever seen staff not allowed to do long shifts. In fact, RM would prefer their own staff to do long shifts as it’s cheaper than using an agency to fill the seat.
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m1cks:
Winseer:
I reckon all this subbing is about getting drivers to do the 12-15 hour shifts that the full time staff are not allowed to do anymore…FFS here you go again spouting the same bollox as always.
You left over 5 years ago and have no idea how things work there.
Nowhere have I ever seen staff not allowed to do long shifts. In fact, RM would prefer their own staff to do long shifts as it’s cheaper than using an agency to fill the seat.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
If the basic hours of a driver are 36.25 (booked and paid) with no SA, then the maximum shift that you can pick up on overtime is 11.45 hours taking you to 48 hours. If you have some 12-15 hour shifts built into one’s 318, then these will be the ones booked off as holiday by said full time driver because of the disparate duty “patterns”. I had one just before I left: Monday 8 hours Tuesday 8 hours Wednesday Off, Thursday 13.45 hours, friday 6.5 hours, 30 days holiday entitlement for 20 years service that had just been reduced 24 days on account of me picking into a 4 day week 318.
Now tell me how much of that set of rules there has changed since I left!
Guess who took nearly every one of those holidays off on a Thursday.…
Guess who could not pick up a 12 hourdocket shift on Wednesday…
If I got any overtime, it had to be a small block like 3 or 5 hours tagged onto my friday’s short shift - which of course renounces my “early knock” for the weekend we all like to get.
How is it dearer to get an agency in, if that agency driver isn’t on parity pay yet?
I had plenty of offers of agency work at RM from 2012 to 2014 over the Christmases and other holiday cover seasons, but I was constantly ■■■■■■ off at how other agency drivers who’d already started by say, halloween ended up on parity pay for doing the required continuous weeks @ RM when I was left on the sidelines come the first week of January. Yes, as you suggest with your endless attacks - I wasn’t very popular enough at the end of the day to get treated equally to others, and the door was closed firmly behind me, and I have not been in there since December 2014.
I’m speaking of office politics, administration, and the way rules had already been altered before I left rather than hard-and-fast easy-to-read rules that people don’t see as “racing to the bottom” as I did.
imho the racing to the bottom business model is a cancer in the entire transport industry. Drivers have only become their own worst enemies for not seeing the subtleties of small, but incremental changes over time - and the way it affects their entire lives.
Meanwhile, my own quest for a permanent four night shift week paying over £30k for a straight-forward job continues. It’s the four shift week aspect that I’m finding hard to get out of all that right now which could be blamed upon no Union Reputation where I work now, oddly enough, and the overtime would be nice - if I could actually get paid for doing some!
RM is now in the private sector. It’s become a great place to work if one can get the entitlements that one once took for granted. It’s the rights to those entitlements that have gone west though, because of this “exclusive manpower/pertemps” thing and suchlike, and the fact that the CWU doesn’t seem to get involved with recruiting the actual agency drivers into the Union. Elsewhere in the wide world - you might see a dozen drivers that are members of GMB or Unison or like me - “No Union at All” because I don’t want to be paying subs to some “faraway” outfit that doesn’t protect me as well as a built-in Union does. Yes, I’ve made the mistake of not realizing the CWU wasn’t so bad after all compared to the others!
Hourly rates are improving across the transport sector, starting with the agency side. Over the years though, we have this race to the bottom aspect that sees more drivers having to go Self-Employed to get that “better hourly rate” or “not get paid for their breaks” or “get clipped on the clock” or even “have annualized hours designed to destroy the overtime payments”. That just leaves the headline basic pay, which if locked into at the start, unable to improve upon - makes the whole job of being a pro driver anywhere - not much of a long term prospect that it once was, well-pensioned, job for life, excellent T&Cs etc. that we all used to know and love. 