One of the wonders of the market economy is competition. Competition sorts out the wheat from the chaff, sometimes slowly, and sometimes it seems a little random, but eventually it works.
Here in Holland we've had all the same problems with agents as anywhere else. Lack of transparency, fishing, idiotic PSL arrangements, unreliable payments etc.
BUT, things seem to be changing. A number of agents have now chosen to publish their margins on their websites or in their promotional bumph. As they see it, a happy contractor is more likely to please the clientco and therefore gain repeat business. Those agents have quite quickly got themselves onto major company PSLs using this transparency strategy. Some of the other agents are now having to work through them and are losing their places on PSLs.
But some folks want agents to be forced by law to give information on their margins. Beware! This would mean that Gordon Brown, or worse, Herman von Rumpypumpy or whatever the Beloved Leader of the EU is called, will be telling everyone what to do. The EU and national governments poke their noses into our business too much already, look for example at IR35, EU agency workers directives and so on.
So I say NO to regulating agencies. I say YES to healthy competition which shall weed out the rotten ones.
