Temp Agency question

S-hoppingMad

I work via an agency. I've just started a new job and apparently the client's contract said that they would pay time and a half for Sat and double time for Sun. This was all news to me, so I checked with the agency (there's some w/e work coming up and I needed to know where I stood), the agency said I would need to negotiate the rate with my consultant...this seems to me that unless I had challenged it the client would have been charged the higher rate yet I would still have only received the originally negotiated rate.
We live and learn, huh?!

Dee123_2

S-hoppingMad wrote:

I work via an agency. I've just started a new job and apparently the client's contract said that they would pay time and a half for Sat and double time for Sun. This was all news to me, so I checked with the agency (there's some w/e work coming up and I needed to know where I stood), the agency said I would need to negotiate the rate with my consultant...this seems to me that unless I had challenged it the client would have been charged the higher rate yet I would still have only received the originally negotiated rate.
We live and learn, huh?!

Cheeky arent they! Still, they are a business and have to make a profit.

Watch how you phrase it with the consultant. You are not supposed to know the rate your office pays the agency and the client booking should not know the rate the agency pays you. Use it to your advantage somehow though.

Chrysalis

I dont have a happy view of temping agencies, in that they take so much money out of the job market.

if a company is willing to pay a temp agency £15 an hour for a staff member that gets £5 an hour why not just employ 2 on £6 an hour and save the £3 an hour on costs of the recruitment etc. Everone is happy except the temp agency of course.

Not only that knowing you work directly for the company and as such normally get better perks makes a happier and more productive worker.

Astaroth

Employer isnt happy though as temp agencies have their benefits.

To work with my employers you have to go through a screening process including criminal record check and full 6 year references. On average this takes 3+ weeks to complete. We have one agency for supplying our temps and they now do this screening with everyone they have on their books.

So say one of our acturies falls down the stairs and is going to be off work for a month and we are desperate for someone with their skills to cover the month he is going to be off work. Without an agency we have to write up a job advert, has to go through HR for approval (typically about a week). Then has to be advertised for a min of 2 weeks. At the end of the 2 weeks we have to interview the candidates and make a conditional offer to the strongest and wait for them to accept - say a week in total. Then we have to wait the 3 weeks for the background check and then they are ready to start work. The problem is that we are now 9 weeks later and the injured guy has already been back at work for a month.

Compared to an agency. Call the agency with an outline of the job spec. Same day they come back with their top 3 candidates. We interview them in the next few days and offer the job to the top candidate. They start on Monday.

Other benefits of temps is that you can get rid of them with no notice and no explaination. They typically will do jobs that no one else likes doing and would stick around to do on a long term basis. If they dont show one day you dont have to pay the agency and a quick call to the agency gets another one in a couple of hours later (for low skill roles)

I certainly disagree with some companies methodologies of having a call centre which is 100% agency staff but there are real benefits to companies of having these resources

caroline1973lefty

I worked for agencies for years on and off. In some jobs I dealt with the HR post and used to open my own invoices so i know that charging 50-100% surcharge is standard. For graduates with good secretarial skills (eg 60wpm+) about the only agency i would recommend is prospect temps in london, who don't have quite such a high mark-up so the rates you get as a worker are higher. their assignments are with not-for-profit agencies.

agree with tiger and other posters that if agencies are charging differential rates but not passing that on, it is likely that the company will take a dim view of this, and the company is the customer and therefore is king, as far as the agency are concerned. but also that caution needs to be exercised in using this lever!

Agree with astaroth that the real reason companies like temps is that they are easy to fire. not that it is all that difficult to fire permanent employees in their first year of employment, but you do at least have to follow some procedures / generally have some sort of right of reply - whereas with temps you can just be sacked on the spot.

importantly, temps generally lose out on sick pay, overtime, holidays, training, and pensions, (even staff dos) though some companies do give you more than the statutory minimums, particularly once you've been there a while. some agencies do all sorts of scams, rolling up holiday pay, unreasonable deductions from pay. If your company has a recognised trade union, you can join them as a temp (I did) and ask them to negotiate for 'parity' with permanent workers - it won't be easy but if enough temps are in the union it gives you a better chance, plus some measure of protection. I work for a trade union now, and a common one i see is making temps pay for their own H&S equipment/protective clothing, which is illegal. Or encouraging people to become 'self-employed' which means you lose any employment rights all together. Also employers pass the buck to agencies wherever they can and if you are discrminated against or unfairly or unsafely treated it is very difficult to find legal redress although in theory you are protected from discrimination on grounds of sex, race etc. In my experience you are reliant on good relationship with the recruitment consultant.

when i was a temp i didn't worry about these things too much, as i was new to the labour market i didn't know any better really. i was heavily in debt and worked for 3 years without more than 3 days off work (this was before the EU working time directive which gives temps 4 weeks holiday). it depresses me to think that a generation are entering the workforce thinking that they can't expect proper employment rights.

lastly (sorry for long rant!) there has been an EU directive on temporary agency workers floating around, which would mean employers have to treat agency staff equally to permanent ones. this has been stalled by the British government who only want this to apply to long-term temps. For more information see https://www.tuc.org.uk 'working on the edge' campaign.

smp_3

Chrysalis wrote:

I dont have a happy view of temping agencies, in that they take so much money out of the job market.

if a company is willing to pay a temp agency £15 an hour for a staff member that gets £5 an hour why not just employ 2 on £6 an hour and save the £3 an hour on costs of the recruitment etc. Everone is happy except the temp agency of course.

Not only that knowing you work directly for the company and as such normally get better perks makes a happier and more productive worker.

This is the price the Companies pay to get staff at short notice for short periods of time. My experience of temping was mostly satisfactory, I was earning about 1 pound less than staff, but I could choose my holidays (a percentage paid) and was also offered some very nice jobs on a permanent basis, the last one of which I took up the offer and have been very happy.