Recruitment Agent Lied to Contractor
A reader tells us of how a recruitment agent lied to him about a contract.
My favourite was an agency offering me a contract which I did not want to even do as I suspected the role was completely different to the one the agent was trying to sell me.
They even offered me PAID holiday, the same number of days as permies on a 12 month revolving contract.
I still did not want to take the role as something felt wrong.
Agent Offered More Money
Then they offered me a little more money – against my better wishes I accepted the role.
Then on my 1st day I was told by the suddenly unfriendly boss no overtime would be paid whatsoever EVER – so the rate became deeply uncompetitive & way below market rate.
The role was not even close to the job spec they sold me. So I did not stay more than a few days or even take any money for it as I had not actually signed the contract before starting.
Double Fantasy
The agent could not do anything.
The agent was guessing the fantasy salary off non-existent 2 hours daily overtime & throwing in the holiday pay to bump that up as well.
The difference between the real & actual, dear readers, was in the region of £2.5K per month!
This was posted as comments by a reader.
ITContractor Comment
The stories of dirty tricks that agents play on contractors is legion – and seems to be growing by the day.
Just as an aside, you weren’t legally entitled to walk off the job just because you hadn’t signed the contract. If you started the contract it was tacit acceptance that you accepted the terms of the contract even if you hadn’t actually signed it.
However, they were never likely to take any action and, even if they did, you could have argued that the reality was very different from what was stated in the contract and therefore they broke the contract.
Indeed, you could probably have claimed, legally, for the days you worked.
The recruitment agent lied to you so it should have been his liability.
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