Economy and social life in many ways reproduce phenomenons of nature. We have fight for survival, cooperation and symbiosis and survival of the fittest. So have we parasites as well. As in nature, parasites feed of the good off others, without giving anything in exchange. And I don’t want to write about thieves – as those are rather like carnivores as to gain food, they have to undertake risks. I am not going to write about politicians either or about benefit scroungers or greedy employees. In my opinion, the worst economical parasites of XXI century are agencies.
At the beginning the idea looked not bad. The role of the agency was to supply its client with required employee or locale. Good old Driver Hire for example was a god send for companies, who learned in last moment that their driver got sick. One phone call and in an hour the truck was going on the road with the subsitute driver behind the wheel. Problem emerged when agencies had overgrown and – not unlike cancer cells – dominated their environment. Today it’s enough to just glance at any job seeking website to notice that vast majority of the jobs there are offered by agencies. If one gets employed via agency, insecurity of his job that can be terminated at any moment will be “compensated” by the fact that his earnings will be lower – after all, agency people need to cut their share. And as the agency’s job is to provide suitable worker to it’s client, if this worker stays at one client for longer, agency can enjoy money for nothing (as the paperwork related to the work is not making anything better, as the client’s company still has to keep records of the hours worked and money paid – the only difference is that instead of paying money to the one, who actually did the job, they pay it to the middle man).
Recently more and more serious companies realized the fact that they cannot really count on l the worker who works on temporary agency contract, as knowing that this contract may end at any time, he will spend at least part of his energy on looking for a “proper” job. So luckily for us, minions, they still employ at least some of their staff directly. But, again, the recruitment process is often outsourced to a recruitment agency. It remains a big mistery to me who (apart from said agency) benefits from this arrangement, as I can’t see any advantages neither for the employer and employee. Why? Simply because the agency that specialise in recruitment might be good in recruitment, but it won’t rather know much about the real qualities required for particular position. In effect the candidates have no chance to show off their real skills and qualifications, and instead they have to answer some idiotic question such as “What three words would use your friends to describe you” or “if you were an animal from African savanna, which one you would be and why?”. So the outcome of such recruitment process is not the most suitable worker, but the worker, who is best at the tricky art of pleasing “HR specialists” who asks him those stupid questions.
But this plague of middlemen is not limited only to people who have choosen big corporation career path. It is now a menace for many freelancers as well. For instance Scottish translators can forget about getting any government job without signing up with the agency first. The government shared the market between few agencies, who, because there is not too many translators in Scotland, are de facto offering the very same product, so the only field to compete for them is the price. And it should not come as a surprise to anyone that the lower price is achieved by cutting rates for the people who actually do the job. The result of such policy we could see in Scotland few years ago, when after most of the government contract were awarded to just one agency, interpreter’s rated dropped significantly overnight. Also, new rules resulted in drastic cuts to travelling money that, in extreme cases, resulted in the fact, that if interpreter would undertake certain jobs, he would actually have to fork out his own money to pay for the privillege. No wonder that many experienced interpreters decided to seek fortune in the different fields leaving desperate agency to so drastic moves as to recruit some random people who literally just day before were washing dishes or working on the construction sites to fill in for proffessional court interpeters. And the creme de la creme of the whole situation was the fact that the interpreter had no idea what his work is really worth to the government. I managed to find it out off the record and I learned that agency gets more than 70% of the money paid for my work by the government…
And one could think that in XXI century there would be a simple software solution. The transport industry operate on online freight exchanges, surely it would be not a problem to create the system, when the institution can book required translator, either choosing from the ones that are available, or being offered the one, that is first in the queue and available at this day…
But the main target of my today’s moaning is aimed at letting agencies. The very need of the existence of such institution in the era of the Internet is beyond my comprehension. I rent flats in Glasgow for 10 years now and the situation gets worse all the time. In the past, there was plenty of flats offered by private landlords to choose from. Private landlords, who were in most cases working people as well, seen no problem to make an evening appoitment to show flat to the potential tenants. Since it was their own flat, they knew everything about it. One could think that in the era of Internet in every pocket, there is nothing simpliest as to put landlord and tenant in touch. But today the flat hunt is much harder than it ever been, as after you find the property you like online, the real torment begins.
The agencies seem to do everything to do NOT let the flat out. First question in any of them will be if the potential tenant is in full time employment, yet despite of this expectations, 95% of them does not offer viewings outside office hours. When one finally manage to set suitable viewing date, he will have to view flat together with other potential tennants. In result, many flats are so overcrowded, that not only any serious inspection is possible, but one can barely move. Of course this is not without the reason: not only agencies save money on employing people who’s jobs is to show flats to potential tenants (despite the fact, that in most cases they see the flat first time as well and know nothing about the property), but it also encourage people to make hasty decissions. People, who have to take time off work, are unable to view all the properties they would be interested in, and are prompted to say “yes or no” on the spot not only by the agents themselves, but also by the peer pressure, as they are afraid that if they won’t run to rent this property instantly, some other people might do it before them
And when finally the flat hunt is finished and you move in, agencies change their position by 180 degree. From now on, their main objective is to do not allow any contact between you and a landlord. Any problem with the flat will become a struggle, as agency will do everything to save money on repairs and maintenance. The reason of it is the fact that if the maintenance of the flat will prove to be too expensive, the landlord will change agency to the one that is more likely to pacify those unrealistic expectations of the tenants that want to live in civilized conditions. On the other side, tenants are capable to withstand a lot, as the necessity of yet another struggle to find new flat and then house move is really not the most appealing one. Knowing that, agencies allow themselves to treat their tennants worse and worse…
The only wise choice seems to be purchase of one’s own property. But even if you managed on agency-dominated work market to secure a job good enough to be able to get a mortage, the property market is dominated by the agencies again…
Photo: Locksley McPherson Jnr, licensed under a Creative Commons License
