most places you would go toodling around Europe arnt so bad…mabey a hi viz or abbey not…just basic normality…its mostly the uk that has the h/s brigade totally ott up their own ■■■ with jobsworths and gobsticks prevailing.no doubt theres exceptions around Europe but mostly its easypeasy.its not so bad in n.i though the mainland affiliated companies are worst,but in eire,its mostly easypeasy again…yet another plus point for living and working elsewhere outside of england
Some great ones here. Especially the petrol depot one. I’ll have to try and use that sometime
Numbum:
The petrol depot I worked at had a long walkway painted across the open concrete yard to where the lorries were parked up. If you stepped outside this walkway or you never had your helmet or goggles on and hi viz fastened up you had a warning yelled over the tannoy if you were noticed from the office.
Turned up for work one day and new concrete had been laid right across this walkway with plastic fencing around it. A couple of us said that we are unable to work today as we can not get to the lorries.
The obvious reply was to walk around the barriers to which we replied are you asking us to break your own H & S regulations. We milked the situation for all we were worth and insisted that we were taken over to our lorries in the depot pick up truck. This was over ten years ago.
Whereas if they treated people a bit more sensibly, and emphasised that painted walkways are simply there to regularise the places that pedestrians cross the paths of vehicles (i.e. to stop it becoming like a market square), there’d have been less trouble.
A workplace with a good health and safety culture is one where if you genuinely forget your hard hat or similar, you’re colleagues will notice and remind you in a friendly fashion, because it’s your head not theirs. And if you’re a site visitor, they recognise that no amount of stern warnings at the gatehouse or inductions can overcome the lack of habit or the confusion that arises from visiting multiple sites each with different risks and rules.
Even with requirements that are essential as a general workforce requirement, there still has to be politeness and a recognition of the proportionality of the response to any momentary breach, and avoidance of hypocrisy by site owners and managers.
A bad culture is one where colleagues ignore safety issues and managers act like irate policemen at times but blind Lord Nelsons when it suits them. I’ve been to sites where they put you through the mill with an induction and load you up with PPE like a pack horse, and then you see an open manhole in the yard without a cover or a guard, and the guy lecturing you about H&S just shrugs - I’ve seen this happen in big, very big firms.
Delivering to a construction site in central London yesterday. 3m long crates that are being craned into a central courtyard straight off the bed of a flat. Truck is parked on the side of the road.
Muggins is happily locating the slings and hooking them up. First crate done and nobody dies. Slings on second crate and waiting for crane to come back.
Site manager comes along and says “You shouldn’t be up there as there is no edge protection. Can you get down please? I’m the one that gets it in the neck if you have a fall on site.”
Sure I can fella, shouldn’t you have a hard hat and hi viz on though?
Him “I’m not technically on site stood here so I don’t need them”
So neither am I so you don’t need to worry about getting a rollicking if I fall then.
Him “My site, my rules. Like it or leave”
But… but… I’ll be in the cab. Best of luck getting the last two off.
Complete and utter jobsworth cockwomble. One rule for him and another for everyone else.
Delivering 11 octabins from europe, because it was only those 11, I had them all, one behind the other, in the middle of the trailer.
I loaded them in Germany, so every one of them was strapped to the floor, and because I loaded them at a loading bay I used the longer (1.5 m) ratchets wich was better for my back. 
Arriving at delivery in th UK, had to follow a one way system and enter a warehouse, and they insisted I opened up both sides, altough they were in the middle.
When the tilt was open, the slats on the floor and the sideboards under the trailer I jumped on the trailer bed to undo the ratchets.
Big problem because not allowed = working at heights.
So I asked them how they were going to take the straps of. The forkie asked his manager who said that he had to cut them of with a knife.
When I told him to pay up 440 £ for 11 useless straps first, he went and phoned the H&S manager.
When he arrived, they had a little meeting and the H&S bloke had the following suggestion.
“You drive out of the factory, undo the straps and drive back in” 
, so I told him that I was not allowed on public road without any straps on the load, so that was out of the question 
.
Another little meeting between forkie, warehouse and H&Smanager, and their final solution 
(after we nearly lost two hours) " OK driver, it is nearly our break time, so we go for tea and we will be back in half an hour, so make sure the straps are of when we come back. 
Rowley010:
But, how is it not safe to wait in your cab (keys handed in) while on a bay? What accident can happen there where you or them can get injured?
One thing I have noticed although this might not be the same on all trucks, is in theory you could knock the truck brake off if it’s on the dashboard. It should require it to be pulled and then knocked upwards (at least on my truck), but maybe just maybe it would be possible…very in theory but that’s enough to “prevent” an accident according to the H&S dept.
Another example of insanity is where we load up pre-cast concrete including these narrow beams (50 trucks a day inc. artics). Due to the way they are supposed to be secured we have to climb on the back of the truck before strapping down, but we’re not allowed on the back of the truck where we load so we’ve got to drive across an incredibly bumpy site passed a lot of workers to a securing gantry area. Considering even the small beams are 1/4 tonne and big ones over a tonne, god help us if one of these ever falls off on the way to being strapped down!
At first, when drivers could sit in their cabs with the keys, someone, somewhere must have driven-off with the loaders potentially still in the back of the trailer. Mr H&S manager writes a report and an initiative, and says; “Right, from now on, drivers can sit in their cabs, but they have to hand-in their keys, in order to prevent pull-offs”. That’s his salary justified for that year.
Then, a driver sitting in his cab without they keys knocks the handbrake off, or has a set of decoy keys, pulling-off early, whilst the loaders are potentially still in the back. Mr H&S manager gets to work, writes another report and an initiative, and says; “Right, from now on, drivers must wait in a waiting room, but they may retain their keys, in order to reduce the possibility of a pull-off”. Once again, salary justified.
Finally, somewhere in the universe, a driver sitting in the waiting room, with his keys, gets so riled-up with the time he’s had to wait for the loaders to take-off four pallets, he storms back to his truck, and drives-off, with the loaders potentially still in the back. Mr H&S manager cracks-on, writes another report and initiative, and says; “Right, from now on, drivers must hand-in their keys, and wait in the waiting room. That completely removes the possibility of a driver getting access to his cab, therefore eliminating the chance of a pull-off”. Mr H&S manager gets a pat on the back, and having justified his £30k per year, treats himself to another pair of pointy shoes, and a clean executive-style hi-vis vest.
To me, anyone with half a brain can see that these incidents are once in a blue moon, and probably carried-out by people who shouldn’t be in the job. It’s a clear case of punishing 10,000 because of the actions of one idiot. They may be the odd big claim, and massive paper trail the suits have to deal with following an incident, but I think the biggest contributor to excessive H&S, is health and safety trying to justify it’s own existence. It’s a big business, and a lot of jobs are created from it, from H&S “training”, courses, equipment, PPE, and it’s empowering to those sad, little people who attend a course, and get a certificate after dinner saying they’re a qualified H&S manager jobbie, thinking it entitles them to walk around like they’re inspecting a battalion of Waffen SS Tiger tanks.
There will be a lot of people want more H&S, it’s big business, and empowering to those who enforce it. They won’t let a little thing like the truth get in the way, the truth that everyone doesn’t need to be punished for the actions of a few.
Rottweiler22:
To me, anyone with half a brain can see that these incidents are once in a blue moon, and probably carried-out by people who shouldn’t be in the job. It’s a clear case of punishing 10,000 because of the actions of one idiot.
If all you’re dealing with is cheap slaves who won’t talk back, then the powerful will punish 10k for the actions of one, because the company has to pay for accidents, but it doesn’t have to pay for disgruntled drivers.
It’s no different from the days without H&S, when the company had to pay for safety measures, but didn’t have to pay for injured or dead workers, so it just accepted injured and dead workers.
The common thread is that the bosses, if left to it, will always treat you badly, because workers’ demands for good conditions of work hardly ever increase profits (and usually reduce them).
The only thing that makes workers’ human needs feature on the balance sheet is when workers threaten profits - that’s when you’re talking a language bosses understand.
A large number of things (like protection against death and injury) are now enforced against bosses by the state, but as you can see, the bosses still have discretion about how exactly a reduction in accident risk is achieved, and they’ll take the path of least resistance to profit again.
Just remember, poor conditions of work are the most glaring sign of the weakness and powerless created by a refusal to stand together, because together workers can and have achieved good working conditions in the past (including recognition of the value of their time outside of work, the value to workers of job security, and the value of workers and their preferences being treated with some respect at work).
If workers refuse to stand together, then they stand with bosses, and that means iron obedience to the maximisation of profit for the bosses, which is not only why drivers’ hourly rates are generally embarrassing today, but that is also why they’re sitting in a grimy waiting room on a schoolchild’s chair instead of in the comfort of their cab, because anything else would mean the bosses retaining less than the maximum profits they are currently able to achieve when they pay you cheap rates to sit on plastic chairs.
Well it only took 28 posts for Rjan to punch the workers solidarity ticket. He must be trying to restrain himself though, as he stopped short of the U word 
Could you explain how my companies drivers “sticking together” will lead to a situation where Tesco won’t take my keys and make me sit in a restroom. After all, you preach workplace solidarity, but Tesco is just our customers, customers, customer. It’s not my workplace 
OVLOV JAY:
Well it only took 28 posts for Rjan to punch the workers solidarity ticket. He must be trying to restrain himself though, as he stopped short of the U wordCould you explain how my companies drivers “sticking together” will lead to a situation where Tesco won’t take my keys and make me sit in a restroom. After all, you preach workplace solidarity, but Tesco is just our customers, customers, customer. It’s not my workplace
The reality is that it is your workplace, albeit maybe not your everyday workplace. Certainly anywhere that consists of people telling you how to do your job, is a workplace. And Tesco is not a customer in a supply chain of goods or services, as if a global corporation is on the same footing as their shoppers, they are an employer in a supply chain of your labour.
I don’t know whether your company alone is big enough for Tesco to care about, but standing together with other drivers would assist you firstly because the mere declaration of a united position (with the threat of further action to enforce it) might be enough to persuade Tesco to drop practices that workers do not like.
If that wasn’t enough, then all sorts of things could be done, but for example everybody on signal would refuse to hand in their keys or leave their cabs, and again if Tesco refused to unload under those conditions, then it would simply mean nothing would go in or out of that site. Or it might be more subtle, where every driver goes in and has a polite argument with the goods in staff, causing the good in process to grind to a crawl.
And if they banned or locked out so many drivers at once, it would have the same effect of leaving them deprived of labour. It’s the ability of employers to act as an organisation with a single policy (and for its constituents to submit to discipline and enforce that policy), whilst targetting drivers as individuals who do not have a single policy (or the self-discipline to enforce it), that allows employers to dictate to workers, and not the other way around.
Of course, maybe many drivers wouldn’t want the hassle over the issue and are content with how things are, but if so, then drivers have recognised the control they have, and have made their own decision, instead of playing the victim and blaming H&S for making their lives hell (when their real complaint is how a particular employer is choosing to meet its H&S obligations, which is infinitely better than being treated as cannon fodder, as workers were treated before unions started to enforce safety measures).
When the HSAW Act 1976 was introduced, workers’ unions were really at the zenith of their power. Pre-1976, it wasn’t the case that there was no health and safety requirements imposed on employers - it was just enforced by unions instead of by the state, according to the safety preferences of the workforce.
Today, where union power is at a nadir, the effect of having no HSAW Act, with obligations enforced by the state, would not be like the 1960s, when safety standards were supported by strongly organised workers who were in a position to assert their own safety requirements. It would be like the 19th century, where workers were routinely getting limbs ripped off by machinery or incinerated inside ovens and so forth, and their families left to become street beggars without any compensation.
What most people really want when they complain about H&S, is not a return of the disease and danger of 19th century workplaces, but a return to the 1960s when workers, standing together, had control and had a say about how their own H&S was looked after, rather than having employers dictate H&S measures which are cheap for the employer but create undue psychological costs that workers have to bear (like sitting in a ■■■■■■■■ waiting room on a plastic chair for 2 hours, instead of a comfy cab!), or even which become opportunities for employers to regularly attack and degrade workers over matters like the wearing of excessive PPE or drivers climbing onto their own trailers, as if they are in the schoolyard getting shouted at by teachers for not having their shirts tucked in.
bald:
Delivering 11 octabins from europe, because it was only those 11, I had them all, one behind the other, in the middle of the trailer.
I loaded them in Germany, so every one of them was strapped to the floor, and because I loaded them at a loading bay I used the longer (1.5 m) ratchets wich was better for my back.
Arriving at delivery in th UK, had to follow a one way system and enter a warehouse, and they insisted I opened up both sides, altough they were in the middle.
When the tilt was open, the slats on the floor and the sideboards under the trailer I jumped on the trailer bed to undo the ratchets.
Big problem because not allowed = working at heights.
So I asked them how they were going to take the straps of. The forkie asked his manager who said that he had to cut them of with a knife.
When I told him to pay up 440 £ for 11 useless straps first, he went and phoned the H&S manager.
When he arrived, they had a little meeting and the H&S bloke had the following suggestion.
“You drive out of the factory, undo the straps and drive back in”
Another little meeting between forkie, warehouse and H&Smanager, and their final solution
The actual problem is working at height ( over a meter above ground) if you had entered the trailer removed the straps then opened roof and sides then removed side slats etc no H&S would have been breached …
Rjan:
OVLOV JAY:
Well it only took 28 posts for Rjan to punch the workers solidarity ticket. He must be trying to restrain himself though, as he stopped short of the U wordCould you explain how my companies drivers “sticking together” will lead to a situation where Tesco won’t take my keys and make me sit in a restroom. After all, you preach workplace solidarity, but Tesco is just our customers, customers, customer. It’s not my workplace
The reality is that it is your workplace, albeit maybe not your everyday workplace. Certainly anywhere that consists of people telling you how to do your job, is a workplace. And Tesco is not a customer in a supply chain of goods or services, as if a global corporation is on the same footing as their shoppers, they are an employer in a supply chain of your labour.
I don’t know whether your company alone is big enough for Tesco to care about, but standing together with other drivers would assist you firstly because the mere declaration of a united position (with the threat of further action to enforce it) might be enough to persuade Tesco to drop practices that workers do not like.
If that wasn’t enough, then all sorts of things could be done, but for example everybody on signal would refuse to hand in their keys or leave their cabs, and again if Tesco refused to unload under those conditions, then it would simply mean nothing would go in or out of that site. Or it might be more subtle, where every driver goes in and has a polite argument with the goods in staff, causing the good in process to grind to a crawl.
And if they banned or locked out so many drivers at once, it would have the same effect of leaving them deprived of labour. It’s the ability of employers to act as an organisation with a single policy (and for its constituents to submit to discipline and enforce that policy), whilst targetting drivers as individuals who do not have a single policy (or the self-discipline to enforce it), that allows employers to dictate to workers, and not the other way around.
Of course, maybe many drivers wouldn’t want the hassle over the issue and are content with how things are, but if so, then drivers have recognised the control they have, and have made their own decision, instead of playing the victim and blaming H&S for making their lives hell (when their real complaint is how a particular employer is choosing to meet its H&S obligations, which is infinitely better than being treated as cannon fodder, as workers were treated before unions started to enforce safety measures).
When the HSAW Act 1976 was introduced, workers’ unions were really at the zenith of their power. Pre-1976, it wasn’t the case that there was no health and safety requirements imposed on employers - it was just enforced by unions instead of by the state, according to the safety preferences of the workforce.
Today, where union power is at a nadir, the effect of having no HSAW Act, with obligations enforced by the state, would not be like the 1960s, when safety standards were supported by strongly organised workers who were in a position to assert their own safety requirements. It would be like the 19th century, where workers were routinely getting limbs ripped off by machinery or incinerated inside ovens and so forth, and their families left to become street beggars without any compensation.
What most people really want when they complain about H&S, is not a return of the disease and danger of 19th century workplaces, but a return to the 1960s when workers, standing together, had control and had a say about how their own H&S was looked after, rather than having employers dictate H&S measures which are cheap for the employer but create undue psychological costs that workers have to bear (like sitting in a [zb] waiting room on a plastic chair for 2 hours, instead of a comfy cab!), or even which become opportunities for employers to regularly attack and degrade workers over matters like the wearing of excessive PPE or drivers climbing onto their own trailers, as if they are in the schoolyard getting shouted at by teachers for not having their shirts tucked in.
Have you not delivered to Tesco? There is no way to slow the process, it’s slow enough
On a serious note, I get what you say about taking them on, but the reality is, there’s a lot of drivers who enjoy sitting around spouting rdc bs. After all, it accounts for at least a quarter of posts on here. And that spoils it for everyone else. As for the firms taking them on, that doesn’t usually end well for anyone other than Tesco.
Its the claims johnnies who have caused this, most of us if we take a tumble its our won fault so we nonchalantly get back up and try to appear unhurt in case any bugger saw it happen, then there’s the ones who act like injured footballers and can’t get on the phone to claimsRus quick enough.
Luckily i deliver to enough little places where all this ■■■■■■■■ is totally ignored to keep me almost sane.
I like delivering to Asian owned/run little places, they just sign yer notes and bugger off and leave you to it, they make a good living too cos there’s only a couple of owners/gaffers and everyone else is a productive worker, got more bloody sense than us.
nick2008:
The actual problem is working at height ( over a meter above ground) if you had entered the trailer removed the straps then opened roof and sides then removed side slats etc no H&S would have been breached …
Never knew that, logic if you think about it, but thanks for the tip.
note to self, think more…