Conor:
ETS:
So if I’m on agency and am about to go over the 48 hrs/week and client pulls the reigns I can go to another client/agency, rite?
Wrong. It is that total of hours regardless of how many employers you have. You are supposed to inform each employer of the number of hours you’ve done with another employer and this is your responsibility to do.
So if they hire me they’d be braking the law/WTD?
Yes and so are you by not informing them of your hours you’ve worked elsewhere. If you did this and got caught they’d have a get out of jail free card because you’d not informed them of the work you previously had done. You on the other hand would be well in the crap.
It is actually quite the other way around. It is the employer who is responsible for recording and monitoring the hours of workers, not the worker’s responsibility to keep records and provide them to the employer.
Obviously in the situation where there are multiple employers, at least one of whom is exceeding normal limits, there may have to be an exchange of information and coordination between them.
But an employer is not freed from their obligations simply because a worker conceals the fact that he has done other work, or because they operate in a manner that presumes the honesty of the worker even in the most unlikely circumstances (who may be setting out precisely to circumvent the regulations).
If you employ a worker full-time 5 or 6 days a week, and over time you get to know his character and lifestyle, it is normally a reasonable assumption that he is not working elsewhere, especially if he knows that he must not - it is borne out in practice and in common experience, that very few full-time workers do second jobs, and it could not be as a driver since that would quickly be apparent on his tacho card (so it would have to be not just a second job but a second occupation).
A judge would surely look sympathetically on an employer who genuinely did not know of a second job in such circumstances, not to mention being impressed with the audacity and the stamina of the worker doing a second job during his evenings or weekends.
But if you are employing casuals or seasonals, it is not reasonable to suppose the worker even has accurate records (since a worker is not obliged to keep them to begin with), let alone is it reasonable for an employer to rely on the unsupported information the worker provides, when that is subject to no oversight nor to the implicit controls (as I’ve mentioned) which exist over full-timers.
It would not in my view be anything like a “get out of jail free card” for an employer or operator who is found to be rampantly exceeding limits. Rather, a judge would declare that the employer’s systems and methods of employment were inadequate and insufficient to meet their legal obligations.
