CHARLES HALL SOCK FACTORY

Despite my first previous bad experience with employment agencies and with the way the benefit system worked I did find one way to take advantage of the system.

In the winter of 1995 I worked 16 hours a week as a sales assistant and earned roughly 3 pounds an hour (after tax and national insurance deductions). So in 10 weeks I would do 160 hours work and earn 480 pounds.

On the other hand if I did 2 weeks full time (40 hours a week) agency work, didn’t work again for 6 weeks, then did another 2 weeks full time agency. I would of course in the 10 week time frame have done the same number of hours work as above and earned the same money.

The big difference between the 2 examples above is that in the second I would also be entitled to 38 pounds a week unemployment benefit during the 6 weeks I wasn’t working. So in the 10 weeks I would get 708 pounds, a massive 47.5 percent advantage over working part time despite working the exact same number of hours overall.

In the 2 months before christmas I worked at the Charles W Hall sock factory in the corner of Shepshed industrial estate. There seemed to be a fairly good bunch of agency people working there which made up for the boring job of sorting out endless bags of socks. It was freezing cold at that time of the year and everyone had to wear their coats and gloves all the time.

As stated before when you are an agency worker there is always someone who treats you as if you are subhuman. Not the management this time but some of the regular workers. The first was a middle aged bloke called Brian, all I did was pick up a newspaper in the canteen and start reading it without realising it was his and he made a massive issue out of it. After a 5 minute lecture I just gave him a mouthful of abuse back. He said nothing else but for some reason everyone else found it amusing and I became talk of the warehouse and earned the nickname “attitude.”

A couple of others treated me as if I was stupid and tried all the old tricks like “go to the bosses office and ask him for the set of left handed screwdrivers”. When that failed they constantly gave me a hard time for the remainder of the time I was there. On the final day I had to walk the 3 miles home in the rain but I didn’t care as I was so glad to be out the place.

It was however the most money I had earned in a 2 month time frame before the age of 20, with a low cost lifestyle it helped a lot. Unfortunately it was over 5 months until I found work again.........and that was another agency job!!!!!