I have an employee who works 5 night shifts within a steel stockholding warehouse - starts Monday night and finishes 3am Saturday morning. He has asked if he can take a 2nd job as a HGV driver over the weekends (contract states he must seek permission from us). We have looked at the working time directive and he has opted out but there is a minimum time between shifts being worked, which another employer may turn a blind eye to or play ignorant. If we allowed this, knowing what he does Mon-Sat etc, could we be held liable in any way if he was to have an accident in his 2nd job. My feeling are "no" we can't be held responsible but is there an arguement that we are aware of the physical strains of his main job and then given authorisation to take on a 2nd weekend job. Any thoughts.

Look at it from a slightly different angle. The work in steel stockholders is often very physical, and can need high levels of concentration for use of lifting equipment etc so this employee comes into work tired on a Monday morning and starts "dropping steel girders all over the place" (an yes for Hancock fans I know that was a building site) how would you react? Its a real difficult one to deal with I know as the employee could just as easily come into work after playing football all weekend and be just as tired. Anyone who knows Salts Village near Bradford may know the story abut Titus Salts who built the village for his Mill Workers. Anyone caught working in their garden on a Sunday was sacked as they obviously not worked hard enough during the week if they had that much energy left! Ah the good old days.

Glad you've rejected the request - just didn't sound right to me! Strictly speaking vicarious liability makes an employer responsible for the actions of their employee. Thus anything that happened whilst the employee was driving would initially be regarded as something that was the fault of them or their employer. Thus a road accident could be put down to unsafe actions of the driver e.g. poor overtaking or a fault of their employer e.g. not providing them with driver training or making them exceed their driving hours. Difficult to see how such events could track back to you. An obvious example of real vicarious liability are the tragic cases where priests have been alleged and/or found to have committed sexual abuse. Up until recently case law had established that an employer could not be held vicariously liable for the criminal acts of their employees. However, two recent cases have the clarified this. If you are interested look up: Weddall - care home manager attacked by an employee who was drunk and came back to work to attack his superior Wallbank - a manager attacked at work by a junior employee Hope that helps Phil

My understanding is that the employer can only refuse permission where second jobs are expressly forbidden by form of employment Contract. I am aware of other Contracts where the employee is required to communicate other employment, but more as a matter of courtesy. I'm not sure where vicarious liability would arise, particularly where the onus is entirely with the employee to opt-out of the Working Time Regulations?

Not sure waht you're driving at Steve, no-one mentioned anything about any "policy" up to now.

I had it put to me very nicely by a Traffic Policeman allbeit 20 years ago. If you work through the week you cant then drive at the weekend as someone has already stated it counts towards your rest breaks. He let me off by the way as my tachographs were well managed. Ta Alex

More around than you think, also as not every one is familiar with the intricacies of drivers hours and the forms of tachograph records, so I thought I'd keep it simple. But I'll concede you are technically correct John.

As far as I can see the persons main employer can allow the second job as it doesn't imperil their work. What they are worried about is that it may impart some liability upon them, knowing the second job has work-time limits. The potential driver has problems as it is possible he/she may fall foul of the driving hours regulations, the period known as Minimum Daily Rest (11 hours) (or 9 hours in certain conditions)...bearing in mind he/she stops work at 0300z on Saturday.....