war1974:
at the end of the day i have worked on and for agencies, i have as a driver managed to get into some firms i would never have as a full time employee and as a recruiter i have had drivers get experience, jobs and skills. i have even gone out myself on a weekend to pass on knowledge to new drivers, i have taken calls at silly times of the day and night to save a driver going into a firm and looking a complete tool! but yes were are all scum and do nothing for the industry, the biggest issue with driving is the minimum wage its only 10 years ago when people were over the moon at less than £5 per hour.
personally as a driver i preferred agency work, having seen drivers do the same run day in day out, week in week out this kind of work would drive me mad
I’m struggling to put this post into some kind of context. Which probably means its a sock puppet of Carryfast
Is it an agency driver, an agency controller, an agency customer or what? I can’t make head nor tail of it.
The biggest problem I have is someone telling me that 10yrs ago we were over the moon at earning £5ph.
Whatever it is, it obviously wasn’t living in the real world 10yrs ago.
Are there any out there not in full time employment who ‘hate agencies so much that they refuse to use them’ for a matter of interest?
Surely such a person would be called “sponger” as I’ve been shouted down in the past using the argument “state pension pension drawers” are as much spongers as people on any other kind of government handout thrown at me a few times…
I think it might be fair to say that those in full time employment have adopted a “Pull the ladder up after them” argument with “Agencies are crap, because I’ve got a full time job unlike a fair number of others, and I’m alright jack”.
Best hope you keep the job then, because one day you might find yourself cap in hand before the very people who might one day put food on your table.
That was a devil’s advocate political broadcast on behalf of the sensible party.
pokemon151:
If you don’t preform they cut your hours making you leave to go elsewhere.
Or, they cut your hours to give to someone else. I was asked by a client “are you free for the next 5 nights if we ask for you?” I replied yes and they booked me (had a call from agency confirming). After third night I get the call saying “client have cancelled next three nights.” Accepted this but I got suspicious when a week later, some days were cancelled after client asked for me for a week. After reading posts on here I realised the agency were simply giving my work to someone else. We all need to work but why should I be used to give work to someone else?
I always thought that particular play was to get you to mark off the diary for the whole week, keeping you away from working at other agencies. There was only ever the two days work to begin with, but you might not set aside the whole week when offered only two days…
One could say this is “Terms of Endearment” since they liked you enough to lie to you.
Every other bugger got zero days this week, and next.
Muckaway:
Just had a look on Directgov at nationwide lgv2 vacancies and I’d say 80% are agencies. Very depressing really…
Agreed, but the figures are worse than that once you take into account that quite a number of the jobs mentioned in those agency ads don’t actually exist.
Quite a few agencies will put a ‘juicy’ looking job out there to tempt drivers into making enquiries about it.
You get invited to the office…
You fill in the forms and do their tacho test…
Then they tell you that the plum job you were after is now fully subscribed (= it never existed,) but hey… here’s one for £7 p/h and they’ve now got somebody who they know will probably take that job.
Quite a few (but not all) agencies are liars.
