Quote:
Originally Posted by Ignitionnet
No, but the balance of probabilities would strongly suggest it's the case as anything else would be suicidal. We're splitting hairs a tad here. They don't appear to have been advertising for permanent staff, your advertisement is for self-employed hence employed purely at the company's convenience with about as much job security as the average employee in the USA. The delivery drivers discussed in the PR blurb, at least, were precisely 0% permanent, all agency / subcontracted.
Regardless I don't agree with many that unions were entirely to blame, however it doesn't change that CityLink were loss-making and all indications are that their costs were too high given their market place. Whether unions could have done more to accommodate the demands of management or not is by-the-by.
I'm purely interested in the timing of the announcement. It seems abundantly clear that they were a casualty of an industry engaged in a race to the bottom where self-employed drivers using their own vehicles are increasingly common.
Blame their customers, the retailers, and in turn us for demanding free delivery if we pay over £x and being happy just to whinge when a delivery from a disinterested, self-employed driver goes pearshaped rather than paying more for higher quality service.
---------- Post added at 17:15 ---------- Previous post was at 17:14 ----------
This indeed - it could quite easily be a part of an accounting scheme to acquire losses for tax purposes.  |
I agree, we are splitting hairs - but they are important hairs.
The supposed permanancy of the advertized posts was particularly why I put the word "permanent" in quotation marks in my reference / link to same.
I couldn't agree more with everything else you've said. "Race to the bottom" pretty much sums it up.
Happy humanist new year to you & yours.