What a smug quote from Julian Young of Matrix (Recruiter, 4 February, p5) in which he argues that 13% is a fair price for longterm assignments.

I think the last time I heard the phrase ‘a fair price’ from a ‘retailer’ it was being used by a major supermarket to dictate supply chain prices to
farmers. And look what that has done for British agriculture, the quality of the product supplied and the low-price labour brought in to meet the
margins.

Is this the final death knell being sounded for the recruitment industry? If Wikipedia is to be believed, the Matrix is the material (or tissue) in
which more specialised structures are embedded. I say it’s time the ‘more specialised structures’ started telling the Matrix something about the
realities of professional, not ‘value range’, recruitment.

Gareth Osborne