windrush:
At my last firm I didn’t get ‘overtime’ at all, the haulier didn’t get extra from the quarries for me being out late/early so could hardly be expected to pay the driver extra.
Then he goes bankrupt, and let’s the firm who do charge for overtime take over.
Rjan:
windrush:
At my last firm I didn’t get ‘overtime’ at all, the haulier didn’t get extra from the quarries for me being out late/early so could hardly be expected to pay the driver extra.Then he goes bankrupt, and let’s the firm who do charge for overtime take over.
Once a year I have to agree with Rjan and this is it.
Our main customer had no work pattern and their work required specialist licenses and certifications. For me to retain drivers I couldn’t expect to say, sorry no work today I’m not paying you. I wouldn’t use places like haulage exchange because the rates were rubbish and there was a chance of urgent work from the main customer.
So the rate to the customer had to reflect a certain amount of standing around. The quarry haulier(s) should have a rate that includes overtime when needed otherwise they are working for free as in windrush’s case, is the driver.
switchlogic:
Carryfast:
Great.So you see no problem with the question of why not offer the job in question on a 3 day week job share basis and you’d withdraw the comment ‘I’ll be unemployed for the rest of my days’ for even suggesting it ( which may or may not be correct but who cares ).Nice try but that’s not the comment you kept referring to is it? The one where you said I’d show you the door for asking for a 3 day week? The one that doesn’t exist because you made it up? As for the comment you do quote no, I don’t take it back. Wanting to work 3 day weeks is the very least of your problems!
I don’t recall saying anything on this topic other than the advert definitely mentioning ‘‘lazy gits’’ and implying,let’s say an enforced up to 72 hour 6 day week or at least being ordered to either cut breaks short and/or take reduced daily rest periods.To which my answer is job share it on a 3 day week basis.
You definitely then implied that you wouldn’t employ me solely based solely on what I’ve said there.
So just answer the bleedin question asked.
Rjan:
windrush:
At my last firm I didn’t get ‘overtime’ at all, the haulier didn’t get extra from the quarries for me being out late/early so could hardly be expected to pay the driver extra.Then he goes bankrupt, and let’s the firm who do charge for overtime take over.
I could just imagine him refusing the overtime on my old union agreement.On which I’d start at 8 pm do my specified run ( job ) and ( finish ) as early as 2 am depending on whether it was a single or a double run to Bristol for example.
Then on my return get ‘asked’ if I would be up for a local bulk collection/trailer swap.Which meant I’d still be finished in well under the 10 hours I was contracted for ‘if’ doing the double run,but I’d get 2 hours overtime for it because a local collection wasn’t considered as the ( ‘job’ as defined by the agreement ) it was overtime. 
As for what he’s saying there I can’t understand if he means he wasn’t expecting to get paid for waiting standing time during the day.Or if he really thinks that the guvnor was doing the extra late run/s for free. 
Carryfast:
switchlogic:
Carryfast:
Great.So you see no problem with the question of why not offer the job in question on a 3 day week job share basis and you’d withdraw the comment ‘I’ll be unemployed for the rest of my days’ for even suggesting it ( which may or may not be correct but who cares ).Nice try but that’s not the comment you kept referring to is it? The one where you said I’d show you the door for asking for a 3 day week? The one that doesn’t exist because you made it up? As for the comment you do quote no, I don’t take it back. Wanting to work 3 day weeks is the very least of your problems!
I don’t recall saying anything on this topic other than the advert definitely mentioning ‘‘lazy gits’’ and implying,let’s say an enforced up to 72 hour 6 day week or at least being ordered to either cut breaks short and/or take reduced daily rest periods.To which my answer is job share it on a 3 day week basis.
You definitely then implied that you wouldn’t employ me solely based solely on what I’ve said there.
So just answer the bleedin question asked.
You still haven’t pointed out where I said this, care to now?
Do you really have that short term a memory?
Carryfast:
Not exactly because as I read it you wouldn’t even give anyone a job if like me they told the boss I’m a lazy git I only want a 3 day week
And again
Carryfast:
Not to mention saying that you’d turn down anyone saying that they’ll take on the job as a 3 day week job share.
As for the question? Already ‘bleedin’ answered too
switchlogic:
If I was ever a TM again, heaven forfend, I’d take drivers on on the shift pattern my boss asked me to, be that 6, 5,4 or even 3 day weeks.
Would I take on you specifically? No, I wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole, you’re a know all, a fantasist, a liar and a general nut case Have a nice evening
P.s I do find this fiction that you’ve created about me hilarious though, that I think people wanting less hours are lazy when I myself recently gave up 20 years of full time all the hours gods sends for 4 on 4 off because I wanted more free time
Rjan:
windrush:
At my last firm I didn’t get ‘overtime’ at all, the haulier didn’t get extra from the quarries for me being out late/early so could hardly be expected to pay the driver extra.Then he goes bankrupt, and let’s the firm who do charge for overtime take over.
Wrong, he didn’t go bankrupt and that system was how most tipper operators working from quarries in this area ran and possibly still do. Moose would know. Quarries fix the rates, end of. The haulier has no choice in the matter apart from either doing the work or changing his type of work. A large job comes on, and the first thing the quarries do to secure it is cut the haulage rate for it. I remember when a six wheeler running stone from north of Ashbourne to Fradley (which we did for years, a two hour round trip) made the truck £85. Out of that I was paid 27%. You could do four loads a day. A local transport company running four wheeler flats would have charged just under £200 for the same distance but of course wouldn’t do the amount of loads per day. I still have most of my timesheets, looking at a few loads I did from Cromford to Chesterfield the rate was £1.70 per tonne and the single bus fare at the time for the same journey was £2! All the local quarries had different rate systems, Tarmacs Dene and Crich quarries were just a few miles apart (you can actually see Crich from Dene quarry) but the rates were different.
When I drove for Tilcon they sold off the transport and our tippers were bought by the transport manager and for a while we ran as Tilcon paid us, time and a half and double time plus mileage which was a good pay system. Then two former owner operators came driving for us, they said we were being paid too much as the rates were not good enough to sustain it. They told the boss who promptly dropped our wages down. The two ex od’s then resigned as the money wasn’t good enough any more! 
So overtime was not normally paid as the rates couldn’t justify it. I also remember sunday rate being rate and three quarters, then that dropped to rate and a half after a while and god knows what it is nowadays. We used to get 17 tonne minimum haulage on a six wheeler no matter what weight you carried, then that was knocked off and they only paid the amount you carried which was only 15 tonnes in some cases.
RMC asked me to take four tonnes of road plannings from Sheffield to Nottingham, the rate was £3 per tonne but they would only pay for the 4 tonnes which was £12! When I refused the lass told me that she thought hauliers needed the work.
Pete.
albion:
Once a year I have to agree with Rjan and this is it.Our main customer had no work pattern and their work required specialist licenses and certifications. For me to retain drivers I couldn’t expect to say, sorry no work today I’m not paying you. I wouldn’t use places like haulage exchange because the rates were rubbish and there was a chance of urgent work from the main customer.
So the rate to the customer had to reflect a certain amount of standing around. The quarry haulier(s) should have a rate that includes overtime when needed otherwise they are working for free as in windrush’s case, is the driver.
[/quote]If we were waiting on jobs we could claim after an hour, it was about £17 when I finished. Hopefully the customer would sign for waiting but many didn’t because the tar plant had sent the tonnage too quickly for them to lay. We usually got something provided the tacho card proved we were waiting, the quarry took photocopies. Waiting at the quarry was done for free though, you hoped a load would come on but sometimes you went home early. I was guaranteed £40 a day though so not too bad and I could go back to the yard and change the oil/grease up/reline a brake etc to finish the day off. You could be a couple of hours waiting to load tarmac if there was a big queue, at least we got plenty of breaks in!
Generally, in hours, you gave one day a week for free. Oh and don’t forget all the hours spent sitting on the M1/A1 etc waiting to tip tarmac when the job wasn’t ready and having to write ‘road surfacing work’ on the tacho chart to satisfy the authorites when you were over your hours!
Pete.
windrush:
Rjan:
windrush:
At my last firm I didn’t get ‘overtime’ at all, the haulier didn’t get extra from the quarries for me being out late/early so could hardly be expected to pay the driver extra.Then he goes bankrupt, and let’s the firm who do charge for overtime take over.
Wrong, he didn’t go bankrupt and that system was how most tipper operators working from quarries in this area ran and possibly still do. Moose would know. Quarries fix the rates, end of. The haulier has no choice in the matter apart from either doing the work or changing his type of work. A large job comes on, and the first thing the quarries do to secure it is cut the haulage rate for it. I remember when a six wheeler running stone from north of Ashbourne to Fradley (which we did for years, a two hour round trip) made the truck £85. Out of that I was paid 27%. You could do four loads a day. A local transport company running four wheeler flats would have charged just under £200 for the same distance but of course wouldn’t do the amount of loads per day. I still have most of my timesheets, looking at a few loads I did from Cromford to Chesterfield the rate was £1.70 per tonne and the single bus fare at the time for the same journey was £2! All the local quarries had different rate systems, Tarmacs Dene and Crich quarries were just a few miles apart (you can actually see Crich from Dene quarry) but the rates were different.
When I drove for Tilcon they sold off the transport and our tippers were bought by the transport manager and for a while we ran as Tilcon paid us, time and a half and double time plus mileage which was a good pay system. Then two former owner operators came driving for us, they said we were being paid too much as the rates were not good enough to sustain it. They told the boss who promptly dropped our wages down. The two ex od’s then resigned as the money wasn’t good enough any more!
So overtime was not normally paid as the rates couldn’t justify it. I also remember sunday rate being rate and three quarters, then that dropped to rate and a half after a while and god knows what it is nowadays. We used to get 17 tonne minimum haulage on a six wheeler no matter what weight you carried, then that was knocked off and they only paid the amount you carried which was only 15 tonnes in some cases.
RMC asked me to take four tonnes of road plannings from Sheffield to Nottingham, the rate was £3 per tonne but they would only pay for the 4 tonnes which was £12! When I refused the lass told me that she thought hauliers needed the work.
Pete.
But in the case of the job advertised no one is arguing about the wage rate.But you seemed to be suggesting that enforced long hours will be required because it could be a case lots of work to do early in the mornings and late in the evenings,6 days per week and lots of waiting around between jobs ?.
Which makes the case against two drivers working a 3 day week each,instead of one working a 6 day week,how ?.It’s 2020 not 1920.
windrush:
Rjan:
windrush:
At my last firm I didn’t get ‘overtime’ at all, the haulier didn’t get extra from the quarries for me being out late/early so could hardly be expected to pay the driver extra.Then he goes bankrupt, and let’s the firm who do charge for overtime take over.
Wrong, he didn’t go bankrupt
Obviously my point is that he ought to, so far as him “not getting extra” is used as an excuse not to pay the driver for overtime.
and that system was how most tipper operators working from quarries in this area ran and possibly still do. Moose would know. Quarries fix the rates, end of.
Then my argument is that workers must come together to fix rates in response, including proper overtime pay. Someone in the quarries will fix your pay at zero, or no higher than dinner money (so far as he wants you alive and back tomorrow), if you’re willing to take it.
The problem most drivers have is that they aren’t willing to back each other up. They’ll sooner do 20 extra hours every week for plain time, than spend a minute standing next to the man who says he won’t do it except for time-and-half.
I am looking to get back into the industry, and the initial emails i sent to a few companies I was honest with my situation… see this post…
The companies I emailed 3 replies, large companies based in Yorkshire and they all said get all my paperwork in order, i.e my renewed licence, Driver CPC and Tachograph card then give them a call to arrange interviews and assessments with the hope of working for one of them… A couple of nationals could not be bothered to reply…
So, If one of them turned to me and stated it as that boss has… yes please… I would work for you… honesty from both ends…
Carryfast:
windrush:
…
But in the case of the job advertised no one is arguing about the wage rate.But you seemed to be suggesting that enforced long hours will be required because it could be a case lots of work to do early in the mornings and late in the evenings,6 days per week and lots of waiting around between jobs ?.
Which makes the case against two drivers working a 3 day week each,instead of one working a 6 day week,how ?.It’s 2020 not 1920.
But what are you arguing? Even in 1820, a spinning jenny could be manned by two men doing 3 days each. By 1920, the 8-hour standard day had largely been achieved in industry - the demand for it had been growing for decades by then.
There are no fundamental reasons why you can’t get a 3-day week. I’ve explained before why bosses might not want a 3-day-a-week man (at equal rates) when they can get men willing to do 5 or 6 days a week.
That said, I forget now what the reason even was that you couldn’t work more than 3 days, or (perhaps even more crucially) why you couldn’t get it on agency.
Rjan:
Carryfast:
windrush:
…
But in the case of the job advertised no one is arguing about the wage rate.But you seemed to be suggesting that enforced long hours will be required because it could be a case lots of work to do early in the mornings and late in the evenings,6 days per week and lots of waiting around between jobs ?.
Which makes the case against two drivers working a 3 day week each,instead of one working a 6 day week,how ?.It’s 2020 not 1920.
But what are you arguing? Even in 1820, a spinning jenny could be manned by two men doing 3 days each. By 1920, the 8-hour standard day had largely been achieved in industry - the demand for it had been growing for decades by then.
There are no fundamental reasons why you can’t get a 3-day week. I’ve explained before why bosses might not want a 3-day-a-week man (at equal rates) when they can get men willing to do 5 or 6 days a week.
That said, I forget now what the reason even was that you couldn’t work more than 3 days, or (perhaps even more crucially) why you couldn’t get it on agency.
Firstly if I’ve read it right your point was that employers see someone who can survive on 3 day’s worth of wages as less desperate and less easy to push around ?.
My point was that we’ve already established that employing two workers sharing a job doesn’t cost the employer any more in employer’s tax/NI contributions.But I don’t completely buy your explanation.Because it doesn’t make much sense ,from the employer’s point of view,in having a disillusioned workforce that’s only working for him out of desperation.
However the more logical explanation is that employers don’t want to create any reduced supply in the labour market.IE just economic reasons related to keeping a cap on wage rates not exploitative ones.
However having said that any employer that would potentially regard any worker/s who want to share a 6 day week among two on a 3 day week basis as ‘lazy gits’ would point to a form of exploitation but not of the type which you seem to be describing.It would be more along the lines which we see so often of employers wanting to keep workers down because of a psychological issue.In which the bosses don’t want to create any ‘perception’ of their workers having an ‘easier’ or ‘better’ quality of life than their own perceived quality of life.IE the boss has to work 5 days or possibly even less per week week and he considers it demeaning to his sense of ‘entitlement’ as ‘the boss’,based on all the usual bs that he’s the one taking all the entrepreneurial risks and if he can’t have a 3 day week then no one working for him can.Or for that matter only he is entitled to a better quality of life.In which case yes possibly ‘exploitative’ reasons but possibly not exactly along the lines that you are describing.
As for the Victorian workers doing job share no chance on Victorian wage rates.However surely there’s a point where wage rates are sufficient to start saying that it’s better to share jobs,on the basis of reducing the working week, rather than maintaining the obsolete idea of the 5,let alone 6,day week.With the win win that not only would that actually mean a better work life balance but it would also reduce the labour supply putting upward pressure on wage rates.At which point we’re again getting into the realms of the good old fashioned opposing interests of employers and workers.Bearing in mind that the OP’s specific example has absolutely no connection with any type of job which I personally might be searching for now.
IE it’s a general observation which affects numerous sectors of the employment market.Which just ‘includes’ older winding down semi retired workers with less financial commitments and who are looking for a shorter working week to a greater degree.
Rjan:
windrush:
Rjan:
windrush:
At my last firm I didn’t get ‘overtime’ at all, the haulier didn’t get extra from the quarries for me being out late/early so could hardly be expected to pay the driver extra.Then he goes bankrupt, and let’s the firm who do charge for overtime take over.
Wrong, he didn’t go bankrupt
Obviously my point is that he ought to, so far as him “not getting extra” is used as an excuse not to pay the driver for overtime.
and that system was how most tipper operators working from quarries in this area ran and possibly still do. Moose would know. Quarries fix the rates, end of.
Then my argument is that workers must come together to fix rates in response, including proper overtime pay. Someone in the quarries will fix your pay at zero, or no higher than dinner money (so far as he wants you alive and back tomorrow), if you’re willing to take it.
The problem most drivers have is that they aren’t willing to back each other up. They’ll sooner do 20 extra hours every week for plain time, than spend a minute standing next to the man who says he won’t do it except for time-and-half.
I’m guessing that you (and carryfast!) have never driven tippers on quarry work? If you had you would know how it works, the haulier is told the rates (why am I repeating myself? ) and they either do it or stop at home. THAT’S HOW IT IS!! There are no extra rates for saturday morning work (or there wasn’t in my day) so a 17 tonne paid load of tarmac to Nottingham (for example) on a saturday morning in 2002 made the haulier £85. I took 27% of that which was around £23 for a saturday mornings work, that doesn’t leave a lot for fuel, wear and tear plus paying the gaffer something so if I was paid rate and a half there would be very little spare at the end of the day. Very few hauliers ran new tackle, apart from the franchise hauliers, both mine and my gaffers trucks were 14 years old. The only large tipper fleets paying overtime etc were either hauling their own products or carting other types of material/muckshifting etc. Strangely enough the ex Tilcon TM , who did pay overtime/loading and tipping time plus weekly wash and fuelling up time was the first to call it a day, mostly because he was forced to accept the rates offered from the quarry, many at cut rate anyway which other hauliers refused to cart but his hands were tied as he used their premises and workshops, and the drivers wages were too large in comparison to those rates. I remember when I drove for him running tarmac to below Camarthen, a full 10 hour (plus a bit! ) driving time, I had to take 5 gallon of extra diesel in the cab with me and the rate was worse than doing (say) three local loads to Burton which used very little fuel and only around 6 hours driving time involved. Unless quarry work has changed drastically things wont be much different now I doubt. Hopefully somebody will either confirm it or prove me wrong?
However, getting back on tack, the job that was in the op’s link could well be that the guy has his own work so can fix his own rates and that is a different matter?
Pete.
windrush:
I’m guessing that you (and carryfast!) have never driven tippers on quarry work? If you had you would know how it works, the haulier is told the rates (why am I repeating myself?However, getting back on tack, the job that was in the op’s link could well be that the guy has his own work so can fix his own rates and that is a different matter?
Pete.
What difference does any of that make to the fact that the advert is offering a reasonable wage on a PER HOUR basis.But reading between the lines it’s also calling for enforced reduced break/or daily rest periods and a 6 day week.So where’s the big problem in two drivers working 3 days per week each for the same hourly rate.Which in this case seems to be £14 ph between the hours of 6 am and 7 pm and £17 per hour all other times.So by exactly the same description ‘‘put the hours in’’ and you can earn £25,000 pa working 3 days a week.
Oh Windrush Windrush Windrush, don’t be so ridiculous bringing real world experience into this debate. Fantasists only need comment
Carry, go run your own firm for a few years and then you can have all the drivers you want on 3 day weeks.
It’s getting rather boring now.
Sounds like a mans man to me. At least hes to the point.
albion:
Carry, go run your own firm for a few years and then you can have all the drivers you want on 3 day weeks.It’s getting rather boring now.
I imagine he has been, on Euro Truck Simulator. Probably has a huge fleet with dozens of happy drivers working 21 hour 3 day weeks
Carryfast:
My point was that we’ve already established that employing two workers sharing a job doesn’t cost the employer any more in employer’s tax/NI contributions.But I don’t completely buy your explanation.Because it doesn’t make much sense ,from the employer’s point of view,in having a disillusioned workforce that’s only working for him out of desperation.However the more logical explanation is that employers don’t want to create any reduced supply in the labour market.IE just economic reasons related to keeping a cap on wage rates not exploitative ones.
The two explanations are one and the same. What does maintaining over-supply in the labour market mean? It means unemployment and thus workers desperate to work. What does capping wage rates at a low level mean, if not exploitation?
It can’t be taken for granted that every boss has a thorough understanding, or that their reasoning is all the same, but probably none can overlook the fact that their ability to impose higher demands and lower wages (generally referred to obliquely as “discipline”) is related to their workers’ need to work.
The 3-day-a-week man may just present initially as an oddity to a small boss, but even with an equivalent tax burden, hiring a larger number of workers for the same work is going to increase the administrative burden, and he’s bound eventually to ask himself “why does this man only need 3 days, when all my other men need 5 to live?”.
A larger boss is likely to understand the structural factors. If he hires 400 men instead of 200, it’s not just the administrative burden at stake but the obvious fact that it’s going to cause hiring difficulties and increased wages, and soaking up all the surplus is going to increase bargaining power and thus have a second-round effect on increasing wages, or else its going to cost a bomb in training (and even then, he must compete harder with other employers for the trainees themselves, for available workers are not infinite).
However having said that any employer that would potentially regard any worker/s who want to share a 6 day week among two on a 3 day week basis as ‘lazy gits’ would point to a form of exploitation but not of the type which you seem to be describing.It would be more along the lines which we see so often of employers wanting to keep workers down because of a psychological issue.In which the bosses don’t want to create any ‘perception’ of their workers having an ‘easier’ or ‘better’ quality of life than their own perceived quality of life.IE the boss has to work 5 days or possibly even less per week week and he considers it demeaning to his sense of ‘entitlement’ as ‘the boss’,based on all the usual bs that he’s the one taking all the entrepreneurial risks and if he can’t have a 3 day week then no one working for him can.Or for that matter only he is entitled to a better quality of life.In which case yes possibly ‘exploitative’ reasons but possibly not exactly along the lines that you are describing.
The boss may think like that. But it still adds up to the same. He may use the language that it is an attack on his dignity and entitlement, but he clearly thereby understands that it impugns the privilege of his position in some way. He might not know exactly how it impugns his position, only that it does.
As for the Victorian workers doing job share no chance on Victorian wage rates.
But that’s the whole point isn’t it - that if wage rates are sufficiently low, it shouldn’t be possible to share jobs.
Britain was the most wealthy nation in the world at the time - as Engels memorably recalled, when he remonstrated with a factory owner on a Manchester street corner about the conditions of the working class, to which the curt response was “and yet a great deal of money is made here, good day sir!”.
The factories were vastly more productive than small workshops, and factory wage rates were initially much higher (which is what induced people initially to abandon the countryside and accept the higher intensity and unpleasantness in the factories), but the point for bosses is to create the widest gap possible between the value of the work done and the wages paid for it, and as the Victorian period wore on they succeeded in doing so (not least by abolishing the Corn Laws, and thus imposing more competition in agriculture, outsourcing food production to the colonies, and forcing down pay in the countryside until workers had to work in the factories for similar pay and worse conditions than they had in the countryside).
A slightly more modern corollary that I know you’ll like was the behaviour of Henry Ford. He paid top wages in his day, whereas nowadays you’ll be paid little more in a car plant than in a warehouse.
However surely there’s a point where wage rates are sufficient to start saying that it’s better to share jobs,on the basis of reducing the working week, rather than maintaining the obsolete idea of the 5,let alone 6,day week.
Yes, that was one of the main achievements of the unions in the early 20th century. The 8-hour working day, initially with a half-day on Saturday, and eventually that disappeared for most. Not just in the UK, but across Europe and in the US.
John McDonnell has proposed something similar with more bank holidays and an investigation into a 4-day week, but many workers it seems are opposed to a real Labour government.
With the win win that not only would that actually mean a better work life balance but it would also reduce the labour supply putting upward pressure on wage rates.At which point we’re again getting into the realms of the good old fashioned opposing interests of employers and workers.Bearing in mind that the OP’s specific example has absolutely no connection with any type of job which I personally might be searching for now.
Agreed.
IE it’s a general observation which affects numerous sectors of the employment market.Which just ‘includes’ older winding down semi retired workers with less financial commitments and who are looking for a shorter working week to a greater degree.
And the simple question poses itself again: why is a boss going to hire a 60-year-old part-timer, when he can hire a 40-year-old full-timer? The answers are above.
papermonkey:
Sounds like a mans man to me. At least hes to the point.
Oi, sexism . I’d have written an ad like that and I’m definitely a woman.
Switchlogic, oops, didnt realise carry had that extensive experience 