motherhubbard wrote:POSTMAN wrote:He's obviously appealed,looks like they may be going down the - 'what about the others' - route...
We understand it is gross misconduct but lesser penalties have been given for the same offence within the area.
So people have been conducted for the same offence and yet people continue to do it.
There surely then has to come a time when enough is enough and someone loses their job over it.
How many warnings do people want?
If you knowingly commit an act of gross misconduct you should be prepared to face the consequences.
there is another way of also looking at this he may not have actually committed the offence but was in the van, it could well be that this postie is one of the ones who just point blank refuse to wear a seat belt, whilst this in itself is grounds for conduct, i dont believe just not wearing a seat belt crosses the
gross misconduct threshold,
however in this situation the passenger seat belt was plugged into the driver holder to bypass the warning, by doing this it is a deliberate act to by pass a safety device and would cross into gross misconduct territory
Now the question would be did the driver himself do this or was it the previous driver of the vehicle, if he is one who refuses to wear seat belts he may not have actually noticed that the seat belt from the passenger seat was plugged in, and thus he would be liable for a conduct charge but wouldnt merit a gross misconduct charge (remember not all vans yet have the seat belt warning and some offices only have 1 or 2 in a fleet of 20 that do)
the postie may have a defence if other vans he hasnt driven in the office had been found the same way, it could then be argued that he didnt do it, and as he doesnt wear a seat belt he didnt notice, it would could end up with him being conducted for the lesser charge as due to the far lower burden of proof threshold for employment matters this would help in mitigation to the simple assumption he plugged it in
.