For my current job, I emailed my cv at 8pm and got a phone call at 7.30am the following day by one of the directors. They don’t use Jobless Centre, preferring to take on drivers that employee’s have recommended or those that enquire. Not necessarily with experience either…
theuploader:
I hear that this industry is some thing like 250,000 / 500.000 Drivers short…
I’ve been looking for a perm position for the past 3 weeks and all I keep being offered
is Agencies…promising you all the work you want lol… in reality its 2days hear or 1 night there or they don’t need you today…Scary times… (where did all the work go)
Loads of jobs in Lincs mate, the pay is gash though and doesn’t reflect the demand.
The O.P. may well live in an area where there are not many jobs.I live in Perthshire and there is not much here.
Lobby your MPs regarding the prolonged high price of fuel.
What used to be paid in wages over and above minimum wage is now spent on fuel.
Crude Oil was $12 a barrel back in the 90’s - that decade when we never had it so good… Now brent crude is around $112 which I reckon has taken the $100 (£60ish) per SHIFT off what our wages would be right now if we’d had no “perma oil scare” since 2001…
It’s about time wages and fuel prices rotated back around again, as business cycles suggest is as inevitable as an interest rate hike one day…
I’ve gambled that the wage hikes will come before the interest hikes - and I’m already starting to sweat because there isn’t really any sign of upward wage movement yet, and noises are already being made about rate hikes as early as next year. As if wages will recover to 1990’s levels in THAT time! 
Winseer:
It’s either regular work for low pay, which they are of course keen to nail you down into, OR sporadic shifts at decent pay. You just need to be sitting tight, thus picking and choosing what you want to do.
Just because you cant get a decent job doesnt mean everyone else cant.
Muckaway:
I walked into the Jobcentre last December and felt ashamed to be there. Yet there were the Chavs, dossers and other lepers that together showed why we need workhouses brought back, all laughing and joking like they were in a hostel for the terminally useless.
And the Jobcentre’s are not there to look for work, they’re there for those who need to pretend to look for work.
So true. I start work on Monday for a respectable wage at an established company. I sent out 20 emails with CV’s attached and this was a result from number 18.
The job was never advertised and I never went to the job centre as I am not up there with the inoculations. The jobs are there if you look hard for them that’s for sure.
Saaamon:
Winseer:
It’s either regular work for low pay, which they are of course keen to nail you down into, OR sporadic shifts at decent pay. You just need to be sitting tight, thus picking and choosing what you want to do.Just because you cant get a decent job doesnt mean everyone else cant.
I had a decent job with built in decent overtime rates on nights with extra pension benefits. It was all turned over into flat rate for flat hours, final salary pension turned over into crappy CARE one, and lower shift & overtime rates. So I took voluntary redundancy and left. Getting another decent job means taking and accepting no downward movement in wages that goes with it at present. I am not interested in working illegal hours for less pay EVER. I’m staying out of full time unless the hours or wages are so sweet, it can’t be resisted. Being last in the queue for jobs isn’t a problem once the queue whittles away after all…
Bugger doing a 75 hour week for £350 takehome when I can get almost the same for 2x15 hour shifts on agency…
So… it seems you misunderstand my motives. I’m not looking for the currently available full time work. You might be. I however don’t mind staying pat outside of full time. If your own full time job is so cushy you feel the need to gloat over anyone else like me outside of full time, then best keep your head down, and hope you don’t find yourself falling out of favour with your employer. These things have a habit of happening when you least expect it, and there’s more than one firm looking to shed staff on things like insubordination, sick absence, and any other old excuse to avoid paying redundancy or severance pay.
Besides, if and when any kind of solid economic recovery DOES come, the higher wages will hit the agencies first, and the most solid of full time jobs last, as is the normal order of things. 