Those of you that have this system is it - 1st offence yellow card (warning) and then 2nd offence red card - off site? Is it legal?

I may be wrong but in a construction environment site rules are law. If the red and yellow card system is in the site rules and has been reasonably communicated to operatives then I'd have thought it is legal. To give yourself some protection it would be essential to record yellow cards given out and also to give examples at induction of what example offences are. For us a yellow card means that the operative returns to site cabins and must wait to be re inducted and tool box talked by his supervisor prior to returning to work. This may be in a few hours or may have to wait until the next day.

Remember it is your site and your rules!! If it is your policy and you have told people at induction then there should not be a problem. If it is construction and there is a large number of people not complying then i would make an example of one and put that person offsite (make sure its not someone bigger than you :-) The rest of the group wont be long falling into line. T

Quite an interesting one. I have worked both for Principal Contractors and Contractors alike in recent years. I have therefore seen both sides. I have seen a couple of our operatives ejected from site using the card system in the past few months. I can appreciate that the PC sets the rules and more fool anybody who thinks they can flout them. I have a couple of issues though: If one of our operatives is ejected from a client site, they are brought in for a 'talking to' internally as well and be subject to the disciplinary processes of our organisation. If they do not improve, then they are clearly going to run out of sites to work on/ clients to work for anyway, and therefore will become unemployable as a result. The problem is that, without objective evidence, workers may feel [rightly or wrongly] that they have been carded for something trivial or inconsistent, or even personality clashes. Once carded, the PC washes their hands of the issue ['sidesteps it' I think was used in an earlier post]. Internal disciplinary processes take far longer than the instant ejection and can compromise the HR and H&S functions of the contractor. Nine times out of ten the offender deserves the ejection, but one the few occasions that they have been dealt with unfairly, have you ever tried to get the PC to allow them back? Forget it... Also, I have practically never seen a PC's own employee carded from site as this is too hard as the HR/ Disciplinary headaches foisted on Contractors suddenly become their problem!

Thanks for your views.