But my plan was to include any and all agency staff, directly or indirectly employed by the PLC.

As it was when we discussed the salary "multiplier" scenario

And could you seriously expect an employer like Tesco to simply outsource all labour?

Part of the scenario that has caused the huge boom in agency staffing in the past five years has been the arms-length ability of the top level employer to absolve themselves of certain liabilities, moral or legal, and legislation is very slow to wake up to the idea that (for instance) an agency warehouse worker doesn't have anything like the same rights that he/she would have if they were directly employed and even when it does wake up it tends to use "persuasion" methods to tweak things rather than legislate - Camerons "recommendation" that zero hours contracts should only be used as a last resort falling on deaf ears is one example.

In distribution and retail there are far to many low-skilled jobs that simply need a body on the ground today but not tomorrow but then again on Sunday and yes, there are far too many employers who see a body required on the ground tomorrow as simply a spreadsheet issue in exactly the same way that far too many retailers see their trading outlets as spreadsheet items rather than places of employment dependency for 300+ families, and any talk of "colleagues" is mere PR bollax and window dressing.

So yes, introduce a penalty on shareholders if your corporation directly employs in-work benefit claimants and you will see a move to even more agency workers.

If in-work benefits were scrapped then employees would gravitate to good employers and bad employers would be unable to retain staff in good economic times.

and just what do you suggest they live on in the time it takes for that to happen?

That would require it to be an employees market and when was the last time that happened in the low skilled sector?

Unless you can see a time when we have full employment what you say above will never happen. Even in the boom years of late 80's. 90's and early 2000's we never had full employment.

Whether Cod'ead's idea is workable or not I have not given much thought but I do believe the growth of zero hours contracts is an example of when the market needs to be controlled by some sort of legislation.

Same with the minimum wage and employment protection laws. Take these away or reduce them and you can guarantee there will be quick race to the bottom.

I once witnessed a small pocket of "employees market" in the Wilmslow area of Cheshire - there is close to that town a large expanse of distribution warehouses belonging to most of the major names, supermarkets (almost every one), DIY stores etc, each of them huge places which service the whole of the North West for their owners.

Approx ten years ago I was involved in setting up the payroll for one of these megalith units involving around 800 basic wage pickers, FLT and dogsbody jobs , at this time all of them directly employed with only a few dozen agency staff to take up immediate day-to-day shortages - thats how it used to be. It was noticable though that at this location, unlike the company's other huge distribution warehousing sites, the basic wage was ten or twelve pence an hour more than you'd expect it to be - for that company this was a big deal believe me but they had no choice because the local area simply did not have enough low skilled employees to satisfy the demand of so many large distribution warehouses which had been attracted to the zone by cheap or no business rates and low rents - Wilmslow is not a blue collar employment hotspot and if one company was desperate for employees one month they'd nudge up their basic rate by one penny which would draw from the other sites like a magnet, it was quite amusing to see large corporations throwing pennies per hour on the table in a bidding war for the limited staff.

Of course its changed now for its too easy to bus in employees or to simply tell them to turn up at "xxx" in the morning knowing that they will get there somehow because they need the work and if its of a long enough duration they'll relocate locally being that they don't have any roots or connections to any given area anyway.

The only bidding wars going on there now are the ones between the agencies to pick up contracts at NMW plus an overhead which keeps getting cut.

In the past it happened at company's such as Lever Bros and Cadbury to name but two. Those companies went onto be extremely successful.

I don't see how that is relevant.

There have always been the odd employer who wasn't out to exploit their staff and offer good wages. And yes these attract lots of applicants.

The trouble is there have never been enough of them so why getting rid of in-work benefits is going to give us enough good employers I don't understand unless as I said it becomes an employees market, which it isn't going to and never has been.

Also there is the issue that if you don't take the job and you are currently claiming dole then your benefits will be cut.

Yep. I'd also just add that this issue along with the argument over the minimum wage v living wage can often be discussed as just being about wages. Whereas minimum wage jobs in a lot of cases can be made a lot more attractive to people not by a wage rise but by better working conditions.
To take Jerry's example of warehousing jobs, there's a similar warehousing site in Sherburn not far away from York. The jobs are advertised at minimum wage rate but they still get more than enough applicants. But then the problems begin. You aren't working for the company who's name is on the side of the building, you're working for an agency.
Zero hours contract (or a guaranteed low hours + extras contract, the typical amount seems to be 8 hours).
Sod all terms & conditions that benefit you, but plenty that benefit the agency such as conditions that say you can be moved to another warehouse or another site entirely at a moments notice.
You have to buy your own PPE. I'm pretty sure that's against the law, or it was the last time I ran a warehouse anyway (admittedly only a small one, nowhere near the size of these).
An "interview" that consists of a mass (20-30 people at once) signing up to the agency.
Long working hours with few breaks and unpaid lunch.
Sod all holidays.
Strict time & motion practices.
Fines for breaking these practices or not working at the correct rate.
Fines for breakages or missing items.
Regular physical searches.


And then they wonder why all but the Eastern Europeans drop out at the stage where you are told/figure all that out. But my point really is that people will work, often happily, for minimum wage. What breaks the camels back is minimum wage plus frankly horrible & what I would describe as robotic & inhumane working conditions.