Comments by Kevin Brown

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

- depends how long you're prepared to put up with it. Your employer would appear to be in breach of the Workplace (Health, Safety & Welfare) Regs re failure to provide access to drinking water and sanitary facilities.

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

On first sight it's part of the workplace and it's a foreseeable risk. Transpose 'pedestrian' for signpost and 'hospitalised' for damaged. The principle's the same - the car park should be fit for use so there should be contingencies for clearing/treating the surface or taking it out of commission. Is the car park solely for commuter parking, or does it include business use, deliveries, unloading etc?
You have to ask if the employee was entirely wise to use the car park if was unfit for use, maybe there was no alternative?
It would be interesting to see what would happen where the employer/employee relationship didn't exist, such as airport car parking. Just how effective are those disclaimer notices?

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

D'you mean Soylent Green?

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

Simon
What if you had 2 employees, alternately working two and three day weeks?Worker 1 (for whatever reason) consistently takes holidays on their two-day pattern and after 3 weeks holiday has used up (by your reckoning) 37.5 hours holiday. Total absence was actually 30 hours.
Worker 2, on the other hand, consistently takes holidays on their three-day pattern and racks up 37.5 hours holiday after three weeks. Total absence actually 45 hours. Discrepancy = 15 hours in worker 2's favour.
Final answer = discrimination + Employment tribunal.
Go with Lisa's suggestion, it's transparent, workable and demonstrably fair.

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

I believe there is no material difference in waiting for a call out at home or at the workplace. Both place severe restrictions on social and family life and adversely affect the work/life balance to the extent that the employee is in effect still at work. You might care to examine recent cases involving 'on call' care attendants and LA residential homes. From memory I believe these not only brought into question the issues of WHD and breaks from duty, but aso recalculation of pay based on minimum wage legislation and the hours 'inactive' but on call.

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

Spot the deliberate error - I meant PRIVATE sector (we only have 'stakeholders' and 'customers' in the public sector)

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

Neither the council's employees nor its elected officials will suffer from this cavalier attitude to the Tribunal's decision. Had it been a public sector body with shareholders to appease perhaps more thought would have gone into this failure to act. instead the council tax payers of Redcar and Cleveland will foot the bill. I'm a public sector employee myself but I have grave reservations about the 'safety net' mentality of some senior public servants - local and national. I don't mind them squandering their own hard earned cash but I object strenuously when they waste public funds.
I was always taught that there is no responsibility without accountability.

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

See http://www.communities.gov.uk/fire/firesafety/firesafetylaw/
you can download guidance free from this site, which publishes a range of guidance documents targeted at various types of occupation.
You should always consider whether an unannounced drill will create greater risk than it will prevent. Don't block off exits though, post a Fire Warden or manager to stop staff using particular routes instead (I hope that's what you meant).

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

This situation is covered by the legislation. Employers must complete a 'young persons' risk assessment before the young person starts work. This risk assessment covers the risks to those under 18 years of age.

For example:-
. any risks or increase in the risks due to youth/ inexperience
. specific training, information and supervision required

The risks to young employees are greater whatever their employment is, due to inexperience, enthusiasm, youthful exhuberance and, in the case of teenagers generally, knowing absolutely everything.

It's prudent to include Work Experience placements in the risk assessment regime, even if its 'only' DSE work involved.

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

Whatever the EAT has said about rest breaks doesn't alter the duty of employers under the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipmen) Regs 1992 to ensure that DSE work is regularly interupted by breaks or changes of activity.
Enlightened employers are usually aware that ensuring breaks are taken enables the workforce to maintain consistent levels of performance. Sadly there are still some who prefer to see a sprint start followed by a step nose dive in performance from tired, disengaged workers. They're making rods for their own backs, did they but know it.

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

I was being ironic, Janet (at least I thought I was) and actually wholeheartedly agree with you. I'm sure that large supermarkets have a very firm grasp on economic reality when it comes to customer demographics, and customer loyalty counts for a lot. Treat 'em well and keep their custom. If someone chooses to see this as discrimination is it unfair discrimination? We all discriminate,one dictionary definition is to distinguish, or have good judgment (if only with the TV remote but it's a bit extreme classing reasonable adjustments for parents with children as Unfair Discrimination.
Maybe next time he goes shopping Fred should take his dad?

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

So it's a crap job but someone had to do it ? Personally I'd rather give a mother with baby trying to get a pushchairor young child out of a car enough room to do it without scratching or denting my car doing it. But that's just me being selfish, its much more fun watching mothers with babies and fractious toddlers negotiating their way through busy supermarket car parks, dodging vehicles right left and centre.
I must admit, as father of twins, that I appreciated the extra width of these spaces. It helped enormously when assembling a twin pushchair and getting two wriggly kids strapped into it but (and heres my guilty secret) although not a mother I USED THESE SPACES TOO!
World of equality? Why the hell not?

Real name is:

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

I can't speak for you, but you seem to feel that there is some of quid pro quo balancing your need for smoking breaks and your unpaid overtime. If the no-smoking policy is solely related to loss of working time then I feel it would be legitimate to point out that others also take breaks. If your performance and rewards are based on getting the job done then the loss of time for any reason is irrelevant. If you have a designated smoking area and your workplace has a policy in place for using it, why the draconian approach?
Co-operation is alwas better than coercion. Let me illustrate. Several years ago management tried to introduce conditions to limit meal allowances to office-based staff making calls on behalf of the employer. Basically, they stipulated that we had to be over X miles away from base for over X hours before meal allowances woud be approved , and they stated they would use a well known brand of software to check distances and mae sure we didn't stray back over the boundary. In response, the workforce offered to return to the office canteen each lunchtime and return to their route again in the afternoon. Absurdity duly noted by management, common sense prevailed, co-operation restored 100%
If your overtime is unpaid, if it is entirely voluntary, then throw your dolly out of the pram . No more 'free' time for you, then none for them either

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

Tracy
If you believe unions are militant you fail to see that change is most often driven from within. Its equally true that political organisations, of whatever hue, will be made up of those who fully engage with the particular philiosophy of their party. In the same way people interested in tennis join tennis clubs, bird watchers the RSPB etc. Whatever you think of them the unions are responsible for driving the reforms that give most of usan enlightened place in which to work.
Forget the NHS, whatever Terms & Conditions they use are underpinned by statutory minima which are enforceable. Things like minimum wage, Working Time Directive, anti -discrimination laws ad infinitum.
You say your employer decides who gets paid for bank holidays. On what basis? Hair colour, favourite football club, in order of diminishing height? My point being, is the discrimination being practised justified on any level whatsoever.
As for 'If you don't like it, leave" , constructive dismissal springs to mind.
Small business or not a GP isn't immune to workplace and employment legislation. You have rights, stand up for them. Your granddad and his ilk fought hard for decent working conditions, I'm surprised you're so lacking in appreciation. Unite they stood, divided you sulk in a corner.
Must go now, I've a couple of 10 year old's up chimneys I need to attend to.

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

I think the point being made is that if the employer sets a default retirement date, whether it's 60, 65, 70 or whatever it can't be any more discriminatory to any one employee than it is to another. The age discrimination legislation entitles employees to request the employer to consider extending employment (I think) but doesn't confer an automatic right.
Why 65? I guess the thinking behind that is that it takes that long for someone to earn the necessary pension entitlements to keep in them in moderate squalor until they die. Why this should be so when women retired at 60, men retired at 65 and women live longer is a leap a logic I haven't yet take.
Why, you might ask, can sportsmen and women, be receiving a pension when they're quite capable of working and more than likely are?

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

Wouldn't it also be prudent to pay in arrears in future?

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

A recent Canadian study concluded that slouchers were probavly right all the time. I've not seen anything cascade into European thinking on DSE yet. If and when it does it will be interesting to see how the new study is received. I think the article I read was in FM World, several months ago.

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

Tony
The list of control periods used by HMRC to advise EMPLOYERS is derived from statistics SUPPLIED BY THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. They represent periods which said profession feel might, in extremis, be realistic recovery times for particular ailments. They are not statutory minima, nor do they prevent employers from seeking medical advice well before these periods have expired. They are guidelines, they don't relieve employers or HR practitioners from using their own judgment or common sense.
Sickness absences within HMRC itself are managed aggressively, some might say too aggressively. HMRC are also one of those Govt. departments that count weekends as sick days, hence fuelling the misconception that everyone's off on a sickie. Dismissal on grounds of poor attendance/performance due to poor health is an ever-increasing threat to many HMRC employees.
( I apologise for shouting but I dislike intensely the imputation that I and my colleagues are serial malingerers).

Kevin Brown
Member - 116 posts

If native english speaking cleaners are also failing to earn the NWM then there is a case to answer but my take on this story is that despite having an own-language supervisor (which must make giving direction that much easier) the cleaner wasn't performing as required. It may be that her standards were much higher than hercolleagues, it's difficult to motivate anyone at NWM rates of pay. Over the years I've seen cleaning stints increase alarmingly and performance standards decline as contracts are competed for. Only customers cn drive up standards, and with them, wages