Having recently renewed my class 1 licence, a personal opinion and sometimes tongue-in-cheek look at agency driving and what I’ve encountered re-entering the world of professional driving. Strictly speaking driving is not a profession, it’s a vocational skill, but leaving semantics aside …
According to Recruit International 2019, there are over 39000 agencies in the UK, an increase of nearly 4000 from the previous year. Consequently, they are the foreseeable future. Although it takes time to find something to suit you not them, initially you will be entering a gig economy world of [zb] in a sea of sharks. That’s not an exaggeration.
Playing Pass the Parcel Game
Employing someone is an expensive business. There are the overheads of paying employers N.I, statutory sick pay, holiday pay, employing an accountant(s) and staffing a HR department of self-described ‘executives’ who will ask mind-numbing questions such as, “have you got safety footwear” and “what does a sign on a bridge reading 13 feet mean?” With a never ending increase in EU regulations, employers found the optimum cost effective way is to pay agencies and let them shoulder the overheads.
Not surprisingly, agencies quickly discovered that they now had the same problem as the employers and use aggressive marketing to encourage their drivers to join ‘umbrella’ companies (several agencies run their own in-house schemes), with offers of £1 or £2 above the PAYE rate. For this small increase the driver now shoulders the large costs of paying an employer’s N.I to employ themselves, pay for their own holiday pay, statutory sick pay and pay a commission to the umbrella company for the privilege. A growing practice is to advertise umbrella and Ltd rates to disguise the low PAYE one (PAYE rates on request). You have to be seriously stupid to believe that if you pay employer overheads to employ yourself, you’re somehow going to be better off financially.
The Links
“Employers using agency drivers with self-employed status or who are hired through ‘umbrella’ companies have been warned by HM Revenue & Customs that they may well be breaking the rules, and could face substantial penalties.”
“I want to see someone come before the select committee and justify why umbrella companies are a good deal for the worker because at the moment I can’t see that there’s any advantage for the worker whatsoever.” – Iain Wright MP, Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.
There is a site that will work out the differences between PAYE and umbrella schemes. Scratch your head whilst testing an hourly rate of PAYE v Umbrella schemes to find out if you can earn more by paying commission out of your hourly rate to pay someone else’s overheads!
http://iknowtax.com/umbrella-calculator/
Where’s Everyone Gone?
In a recent FTA report of 500 logistics companies, the findings are that approximately 15% of driving vacancies remain unfilled and that a predicted further 35% of vacancies will remain vacant for up to six months. That report barely sees the light of day, yet if Tesco runs out of baked beans in their super stores that will make news headlines! The blame game suggests a shortage of drivers, but is the reality that these 15% vacancies are the low pay stressed filled jobs that are farmed out to agencies and which even the Eastern Europeans steer clear of? Additionally, several of the larger companies have permanent agency vacancies because they can’t hire drivers due to company policy induction processes, assessments, CO2 emission lectures, or retain them through micro-management practices … A mind numbing waste of time that saps the will to live. The good news and probability is that when there’s a real shortage of drivers, this current nonsense will end overnight.
The Recruitment Agency Fandango
Unfortunately, in an uncertain future the UK is now a ‘gig economy’, or technically a free labour market organized around short-term contracts and freelance (umbrella/Ltd) employment, despite the agency hype of, “exciting work, fantastic rates” and “wonderful opportunities.” A suggestion for agencies might include ditching the “free uniform” (£5 high-Viz vest with advertising agency logo), together with the pointless “24 hour helplines” and adding £1ph on the already abysmal PAYE hourly rate and watch the vacancies start to fill. There are an estimated 60,000 people with HGV licences in the UK who aren’t using them and there’s probably a simple reason why.
“But the opinion of drivers - according to a recent returnloads.net survey - is clear. More than 95% say increased wages would go a long way to solving the problem.”
Buyer Beware
Over ten years ago I was taking home £600 a week (6x10 hour shifts) on PAYE nights and that’s now a distant dream. The o/t after eight has long gone; many day/night rates are now the same and the latest scam is to promote umbrella schemes to make the driver pay the agency employer overheads. The mass influx of cheap East European foreign labour destroyed what was once a career for aspiring British HGV drivers and the requirement often now used of, “Be able to communicate effectively” is a polite way of saying, must speak English. The same politicians that dragged the UK into the EU are responsible for this and as we older drivers retire, there might well come a day in the not too distant future when we look back and find that the HGV driving ‘profession’ is now a near minimum wage occupation dominated by foreigners.
From jobs advertised as trunking that turn out to be shunting, to timesheets that pay for hours worked (not a minimum eight) and tramping to Scotland for £10.25ph … walk away, unless of course you’re a new starter and want a couple of months experience. That’s not to say good agency jobs don’t exist, but are few and far between and bad agencies far outweigh the good in the agency HGV Fandango. Personally speaking, the best job I ever had was an agency job, but so was the worst and if you do find a good one stick with it, because you’ve found an oasis in a desert.
