Any agency workers managed to get furlough pay?

[Noentrymeansnoentry]

I've been doing agency work for over a year, with different hours each week.

A couple of weeks ago the agency told me they couldn't help.

I have only just found out that agency workers are eligible for this Coronavirus scheme as they can pay you what you were earning during this time last year and then claim it back from the government.

So I've sent an email to ask for this to be done, but I'm worried they might say no. What if they already knew about it but were pretending not to know for some reason? Employers are allowed to take part in this scheme but they presumably don't have to.

What are my chances of this going in my favour?

Bump

I'm not feeling confident about this.

Please help!

My son was sent a letter last week Ava is entitled to £15 per week (he’s a student so only dud a couple of shifts a week - catering)

And

did

Contact ACAS. I did see a supply teaching agency offering to pay its workers so hope is not lost. The agency is called Apollo if you Google it.

I'm an agency supply teacher and I am getting a huge £72 per week in furlough pay. The amount is so small for me because I didn't work much last year. They started it last week but backdated it to the 27th? March. I didn't have to do anything apart from respond to an email asking if I'd agree to being furloughed. I've worked for the same agency for 9 years.

@TwoZeroTwoZero How long ago did you receive the email?

@Northernsoullover Thank you, I never thought of ACAS, that's a good point as they have helped me with something before and were very helpful. I'll wait until next week first and see if the agency reply to my email, and go from there.

They first emailed me in the 1st week of April saying the gov't had given or was going to give guidance about agency workers.
They then emailed me to say they were working on a list of those who were eligible.
Last week they said I was eligible and if I agreed, which I did, they'd give me my 1st payment last Friday.
It is for 3 weeks to begin with but will continue until, I assume, schools reopen and they start needing supply teachers again.

See, this is why I get a bad feeling about it. They have sent me nothing. I feel like if they really wanted to pay me, they'd be actively contacting me. The fact that I'm having to chase them up is really not a good sign.

No, I can imagine. Are you in a union at all? My union have been good at offering advice and support re. furloughing etc. If not, acas as mentioned above should offer some help.

OP- is your company saying they have no work, or they have shut completely? Do you have a union or rep?

I'm with a healthcare agency. Seems that with all the retired staff coming back, staff being re-deployed from wards/departments which have been shut and military staff, there isn't much demand for agencies.
My company is still running, and others do have shifts, but not much around. I asked to be furloughed, but they said that is only if the company has closed and I'd risk redundancy. I'm also pregnant, so couldn't work with covid patients anyways. On their advice, I'm getting statutory sick pay of £92/week!

I'm an office temp, not healthcare. I do customer-facing, non-essential work which isn't possible to be done at home, and most offices are closed so nobody needs me. The agency phoned me around 20th March or so to say I was extremely unlikely to get any work from them for the foreseeable future. One or two of the recruitment consultants are working from home (although I doubt if they're recruiting anyone) and it sounds like the rest of them have been furloughed. I know there's someone still working in the payroll department because they sent me this year's P60 only a few days ago, so there are people around.

Sadly I'm not a member of a union.

I'll see if they reply to my email next week and go from there. If they say no, I'll definitely be phoning ACAS. As far as I can see from the government guidelines, agency workers don't have to officially be made redundant. But it does say they can pay you based on what you are were earning this time last year, or by averaging out your pay over the past year, and then they can claim it back from the government.

Most agencies will not have a cash reserve to pay anyone. They will be reliant on getting the furlough payments from the government and the schema to apply for that doesn't even open until Monday.

@Fredthedoggie I was worried about that. It is very unfair on all their temps though.

Also I'm worried about the agency going out of business altogether and then there'll really be no work. I remember years ago I did a few months somewhere, luckily O got paid and everything but only a few weeks later received a message to say they'd had to close. There's a very real risk of that happening here.

But even if they can't afford to pay me, they could've at least sent an email to say so. It costs nothing to communicate.

There is guidance- only published Friday evening

www.gov.uk/guidance/work-out-80-of-your-employees-wages-to-claim-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme

The information on how to calculate furlough pay has only just been released - and its fairly illogical. So they probably just don't know what they are doing and are muddling through same as everyone else.

There is a cost to them- to do it they need to have staff that are not furloughed.