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michaelt  
#1 Posted : 04 February 2019 08:52:36(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
michaelt

Can a principal contractor levy a (company) fine for not wearing PPE? (£250 Ist offence/ £500 second offence)

SNS  
#2 Posted : 04 February 2019 09:05:11(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
SNS

Not a lawyer, however, it probably depends on contracts and wording.

Who decides?

Burden of evidence needed?

Witness statements?

Investigation training and recording?

Is there an appeals process?

Who pays - the individual or the company?

How are the 'fines' levied?

As far as I am aware 'fines' can only be awarded by a court of law, everything else is a 'penalty charge'.

Do they provide PPE?

If it is supposed to be an incentive to correctly wear PPE then conditions notices probably need to be issued and posted on the site, not sure I would want to work in an atmosphere like that.

Roundtuit  
#3 Posted : 04 February 2019 09:48:58(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Roundtuit

I would walk away from such a principal - HSE by stick is never a winner and there are some potential complications:

1) If the employee were to be recharged this money is it explicity set out in their employment contract? otherwise they could rightly argue an unfair deduction from wages.

2) If the deduction was agreed and did occur would this make the actual paid hourly rate drop below the National Minimum Wage (a number of major employers had to adjust their uniform arrangements - weekly deduction form wages - in light of this).

3) The principal in setting this out is condoning bad practice it should be first offence warning, second offence eviction form site (either the individual or the company employing them).

Arguing from the view point of a fair and balanced contract i.e. there are no unfair terms:

is there also an equivalent reward for compliance?

can the sub-contractor issue fines on the principal?

Roundtuit  
#4 Posted : 04 February 2019 09:48:58(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Roundtuit

I would walk away from such a principal - HSE by stick is never a winner and there are some potential complications:

1) If the employee were to be recharged this money is it explicity set out in their employment contract? otherwise they could rightly argue an unfair deduction from wages.

2) If the deduction was agreed and did occur would this make the actual paid hourly rate drop below the National Minimum Wage (a number of major employers had to adjust their uniform arrangements - weekly deduction form wages - in light of this).

3) The principal in setting this out is condoning bad practice it should be first offence warning, second offence eviction form site (either the individual or the company employing them).

Arguing from the view point of a fair and balanced contract i.e. there are no unfair terms:

is there also an equivalent reward for compliance?

can the sub-contractor issue fines on the principal?

A Kurdziel  
#5 Posted : 04 February 2019 10:00:32(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
A Kurdziel

Only a court can apply a fine but an employer can as part of a contract insist on a penalty payment for a failure to comply with a contractual obligation. This payment though must be ‘fair’ in law. Fairness is defined by a whole series of laws including employment law, contract law and statute.

Things that need to be noted:

  • This cannot be used as a way to claw money back that had been spent on PPE under Health and Safety laws. These have to be provided for free
  • It has to be part of the contract of employment: it cannot be decided to unilaterally impose it without amending the contract
  • You cannot take money out of people’s pay packets to pay for it
  • It must not be excessive: if someone loses a £20 pair of gloves, you cannot charge them £500. What contractor costs are being covered here, for failure to wear PPE?
  • There has to be some sort of process that establishes that this is not just some arbitrary decision
  • This process can be legally challenged in an Employment Tribunal
michaelt  
#6 Posted : 04 February 2019 10:06:48(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
michaelt

This is termed as a "company" fine and not on the individual, therefore the focus would be on the company's supervision as well as the indivual's duty to wear PPE.

achrn  
#7 Posted : 04 February 2019 10:19:13(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
achrn

We have done work on non-UK sites which had such 'fines' in the contract.  I don't think we've ever experienced it in the UK.  Actually, as noted, they are simply penalties in the contract, and in a company-company contract you can generally do what you like (as long as it's not actually illegal).  Employment contracts and fairness clauses are irrelevant.

We used to periodically get timestamped photographs from the main contractor, in which operatives not wearing the full set would be circled and there'd be an accompanying pseudo-invoice totalling the fee (which actually was just deducted form our next invoice payment).  The only thing we really needed to do was make sure that they had correctly identified our people and we weren't being 'fined' for someone else's lapses.

It did focus the minds of the operatives and supervisors on site - even theough the money wasn't coming out of their pay, a weekly site meeting were you say 'Jim not wearing his gloves on Tuesday got us fined 300 quid' gets the message across.

Roundtuit  
#8 Posted : 05 February 2019 08:24:13(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Roundtuit

Roundtuit  
#9 Posted : 05 February 2019 08:24:13(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Roundtuit

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