Betfair Official Blog

Temping Fate

Our man in the square mile continues his blog on life in the City...

Temps - those workers who come and go. Student staff. Casuals. Work and go. Saving up for an 'experience', (what I would call a holiday.) The last temp said she'd an amaaaaayzing time working on a boat in the Med. I had an amaaaayzing time on a boat in the Med watching people work. She caught a fish, I ate a fish. Work harder love.

Temps come and temps go. Its part pf the deal. But Andrew Miller, MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston (no idea, I've never heard of it either,) wants to give agency workers the rights to the same pay and conditions as their permanent colleagues. Our honourable friend thinks it wrong that businesses can offload temps when business is not going so well, and that they have no need to worry about being sued for unfair dismissal. How is it "unfair" that you are not wanted to work? Unfair is working hard for a bonus that may never arrive.

It's good enough for surgeons, right? You don't pay a top private surgeon for his off days, rather you pay him for the time he puts in surgeoning. Are temps better than surgeons? Are temps better than all self-employed persons who only get paid when someone pays them to work?

Miller's ploy is to make it more expensive for businesses that need to hire temps. Genius - that will work. There's the phone now. Ring-ring! "Wot's matter? Sick? Can't come to work? But we still have to pay you? Fine - no problem with that."

Better to just use interns from colleges and pay them nothing. They can add it to their tiresome list of CV life experiences, like fishing on a boat, teaching English in Japan or dancing in a pub.

Kerching!