Posted By notsothicko Employee is on his way to work at 2:55 pm turning into the carpark, emploee due to start work at 3pm. Another car runs into the back of employees car whilst turning right on a public highway and employee suffers whiplash injury. Employee works for a couple of hours then goes home due to injury. Union tells employee this is an industrial injury and he can make a claim. I do not think this is an industrial injury as the employee was not AT WORK at the time can anyone shed any light of this Industrial Injury or NOT ?????

Posted By Gff RTA sort it with the other geezers insurance!

Posted By holmezy If the employee was "on his way to work" and the accident happened on a "public highway" then by no stretch of the imaginattion would I consider this to be a workplace accident. And I would want to know why the unions consider it to be work related and why they are encouraging a claim. Perhaps it would be everyones interests if the union promoted safety to a greater degree rather than trying to "cash in" on accidents. Holmezy

Posted By Peter Longworth Good afternoon Notso I can't see why you are worried about this. The union rep can advise what he likes, but the truth is that in order to make a successful claim the IP would have to prove your company was negligent in some way that contributed to the accident. If you weren't negligent you have nothing to worry about. As for unions only existing to facilitate claims, the same applies. If you are not negligent you have nothing to worry about.

Posted By Kevin Kelly Would agree with above re the motives of the union. Is it just me or are unions only getting involved in nothing that is constructive. How can an employer be responsible for all their employees who are in transit on public highways when they are not actually working? The employer has no say on the standard of the car, the manner in which it is being driven, the road conditions of the road etc so how can a union rep decide that the company has a case to answer?

Posted By Bill Parkinson I have had to deal with similar incidents and in all the cases the outcome has been the same. The person was not officially at work and therefore not work related. The incident itself was a road traffic accident which is dealt with by different legislation and would not be reportable under RIDDOR if the person was off work etc. I have also had to deal with a person who was knocked down when crossing the car park and even this was treated as a RTA and not work related. Regards Bill

Posted By John D Crosby This is not uncommon these days- I have had a similar situation develop. If my memory serves me correctly this has something to do with the old Sickness Benefit system whereby you were able to get extra payment if your sickness was because of an industrial injury and the system did include travelling to work. The payment was paid by the State and had nothing to do with civil claims against an employer although a lot of people thought it was. The system is no longer in operation but surely there is another old 'un' out there who remembers this. John C

Posted By Fred Pratley Car on Public road hit by another car while turning into works car park - RTA with no liability on the company. However, presuming employee takes sick time as a result does he get sick pay? If the union is giving you this kind of grief and has an aggressive attitude, you could hint that the company might not be paying any sick pay - after all, the employee will be claiming all lost wages and overtime as part of his insurance claim against the other driver - so why should the company subsidise him?

Posted By Edward Shyer John, You are correct SSP is paid by the government and if a claim of over £2500 is paid then any SSP or indeed any benefit's are recovered by the compensation recovery unit (established by the previous government in the early nineties). You are also correct the "employee" can in fact anyone can place an entry into the accident book but it is their choice. The Employer has a duty to make this B1510 available to employees but does not have to place an entry in on demand. Again I would fully agree with you that that unions are not only experts in this field. As one person asked about industrial injury benefit that was payable a few years by the old DHSS ( or as a good lad used to call it the pancrac)I do indeed remember those times. I also remember the times of the CLOSED shop and if you were unskilled (in my day this was called a working class man) trying to to get a job that paid the best money to feed and give your family a decent living then you were refused the job because you were in the wrong union. It did not matter weather you were in UCATT, TGWU, but if a labouring job was advertised in a printing works for instance and you were not a member of SOGAT(even as far back as 75)you did not get the job. Yes I would certainly agree that unions a more that able to hold their own. Even allegedly to the point of being set up by the same previous government (UDM) As with regards to H&S and the unions I have over the years seen where the shop steward has sanctioned the use of many an unsafe practice with blind eyes being turned especially on BULL week. Luckily things have changed since them days. With regards to (pretty dumb)consultancies this may be the case in a minority of case. It would be interesting as an aside issue to see how many H&S professional have ended up doing this job who have come from a trade union background. To the original of this thread RTA not an industrial injury

Posted By John Murgatroyd Thankfully, things have changed with unions. They are now amalgamating to form larger unions (there are therefore less of them, but larger !) and are also amalgamating internationally. So, you can be a member of several unions, and just one ! Compensation: Think on this. If it is a NWNF solicitor handling the case, then they don't bother if there is a less than 50% chance of a fee out of it. In any case, the guy has a perfect right to claim sick pay if he is sick or injured. Where does it say that sick pay is only paid if the sickness or injury happened at work ? I'll reiterate this, the person INJURED either makes the entry or says what goes into it or agrees the entry, the employer has no right to alter it or refuse to let the injured person make the entry.

Posted By Seamus O Sullivan Hi, Not knowing any of the details, I would be slow to make any judgment. However it is not unknown for accident victims to suffer delayed shock.Initally the victim might feel fine. This may be why the injured party attempted to work.( s/he did suffer a whiplash injury) This is perhaps where the legal people and the medical people can earn their money. On the face of it , it seem the accident occured outside work, but one can never assume the legal people will come to the same conclusion. The other driver was not an employee ( i presume) Seamus

Posted By John Murgatroyd Does it make any difference if the person "on the premises" was an employee or not ? Even a visitor is entitled to expect the place to be organised and not a death-trap.

Posted By Peter Longworth Darren I couldn't agree more. I always thought that a health and safety professional should take an even handed approach and do his job without fear or favour. However the amount of union bashing on this thread makes me wonder if I am alone in thinking that. As regards making a claim, this can only happen if an employee is injured following an accident. As you quite rightly point out, the trade unions employ very experienced solicitors who will assess whether a claim is viable or not. The fundamental point is no accident, no claim. Simple really. Put your efforts into reducing accidents and the claims will reduce accordingly. Bleating about unions doing their job doesn't help anybody.