# Work making employee pay insurance excess following works van crash



## BigTom (Feb 13, 2014)

My work have said that in future if someone crashes a works van (whilst out on a job for the company), that they will have the insurance excess deducted from their pay.

From my law at work book this looks to be legal (you can make deductions for "poor work" as long as agreed in advance and specific statements of what will be deducted and under what circumstances), but I'm wondering if this is common practice?

Seems wrong to me, if I'm out doing a job for the company and have an accident, I don't think I should pay the excess, as I'm only there because the company has asked me to be there. I kind of get it if someone was being reckless but this has come about because someone scraped the side of a van (as is prone to happen to vans) and she is not the kind of person to drive recklessley, she is just inexperienced at driving vans and didn't give enough of a swing around a car park corner.

No union at work, suspect I'm the only person in a union in the whole company. Not sure if I'm going to agree to this or not. Will be difficult to get collective action as half the office are still in their probation period. Even if I agree to it, I'm going to state that I'm not happy about it, I would like to know if this is normal or not as it's the only company I've worked for with vehicles.


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## fractionMan (Feb 13, 2014)

I don't see how this can be legal.  It's bad enouigh, but they could also change their insurance to have huge excess policies (say 99% of a claim or 50k or whatever), saving themselves almost all the insurance and passing on the cost to the workers.


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Feb 13, 2014)

Watches thread. 

It's the case at my place, although when I damaged the hire car after driving it several miles of road to go fishing (as I was asked to) they didn't bill me. I can see where they're coming from, but it still worries me it could happen.


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## equationgirl (Feb 13, 2014)

This suggests that if it's not in current contracts, such a change would have to be agreed:


> Certainly there is no problem having a contractual term that says that the employee pays the excess, there is very little you can't put in a contract if both parties agree to it. But the implication is that this isn't in your contract and they are trying to force it in, changes to contracts of employment really need to be by mutual consent (either with you individually or through a collective agreement).
> 
> As for removing your car if you don't sign, the question is whether you are entitled to a car in your contract, if so then removing it is a breach of contract on their part. Putting you into a disciplinary would also be hard since it's not clear what the basis for that would be.
> 
> So you can probably refuse to sign without them being able to do a great deal but at the end of the day I'd have thought that whether what they are asking is reasonable depends on the letter they want signing. Does it set a limit to the excess and properly define the circumstances under which it is payable?


http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=1002215

Personally I'd want very clear definitions of how much I would be expected to pay and under what circumstances it would be payable by an employee. If they're going to take it out of your salary I'd want a minimum of one month's notice.


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## jakethesnake (Feb 13, 2014)

This reminds me of the practise in pre-nationalised coal mines of charging workers if their pick-axe or shovel broke. A practise that was got rid of by the unions. We really are going backwards very fast in terms of workers rights in this country.


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## maomao (Feb 13, 2014)

How much is the excess? You should definitely kick up a fuss. I managed to get a 'no sickpay' change of contract kicked out where I work despite being the only one to refuse to sign.


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## StoneRoad (Feb 13, 2014)

Two comments

- I wonder what would happen if it was the Boss driving, and he had a prang ???
- what would be the situation if the member of staff was definitely not at fault such as being driven into whilst stationery, with the engine off and the handbrake applied.

Just food for thought.


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## discokermit (Feb 13, 2014)

tell them you won't drive the van then.


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## 8115 (Feb 13, 2014)

Eeek.

Legally (scratches head) this is a change to your working terms and conditions.  And it's fairly significant, given that I (for instance) couldn't afford to pay £250 if that was the excess for damage.

Consult your union, natch.


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## moomoo (Feb 13, 2014)

I think that if we have one crash then we don't have to pay but for the second and subsequent claims we have to pay the excess if it's our fault.


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## Addy (Feb 13, 2014)

The company I work for has a policy in place like this.
If it is proven that you are responsible for the cause of an accident or accidental damage to a company vehicle you are liable for the £500 insurance excess charge.

To this, I stopped using company vehicles and added business miles to my own car policy (which brought my premium down by about £15) and I claim a mileage allowance which puts me firmly in credit with my mileage claims.


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## weltweit (Feb 13, 2014)

Certainly sounds like a nasty policy, no matter what the legality of it. You are working, work has asked you to drive a vehicle for them they should at the least properly insure you. I would think twice about working for them if I had a choice if they do other things in this way they may not be that nice an employer.


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## dessiato (Feb 13, 2014)

It was the case at one of my jobs that the driver was liable for all the costs of repairing the damage, even if it wasn't the driver's fault. But that was in Sudan where things are different. 

I'm not sure that I would want to drive for a company that had this policy in the UK. You never know what is likely to happen in the event that there is a claim. It could run into a huge amount of money as others have suggested.


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## equationgirl (Feb 13, 2014)

weltweit said:


> Certainly sounds like a nasty policy, no matter what the legality of it. You are working, work has asked you to drive a vehicle for them they should at the least properly insure you. I would think twice about working for them if I had a choice if they do other things in this way they may not be that nice an employer.


Asking an employee to pay the excess doesn't mean the vehicle isn't properly insured. All it means is that work don't want to pay the excess if there is a claim.


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## weltweit (Feb 13, 2014)

equationgirl said:


> Asking an employee to pay the excess doesn't mean the vehicle isn't properly insured. All it means is that work don't want to pay the excess if there is a claim.


You are right, but they are asking the employee to shoulder part of the risk, namely the excess.


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## Mr Smin (Feb 13, 2014)

You could fairly argue that the employer has not properly ensured your safety or taken proper care of his property by allowing you to drive a vehicle without first training you to drive it. For a van this could be done in half a day - specifically getting staff used to a vehicle that is bigger than their car.
Although the OP said vans are prone to scrapes, this is not true when you train people to drive them. In the ambulance service even the staff that do non-emergency work have to go on a week long driving course (and have to have held a car licence for at least 2 years before being hired) and scrapes are very uncommon.


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## equationgirl (Feb 13, 2014)

weltweit said:


> You are right, but they are asking the employee to shoulder part of the risk, namely the excess.


I know. Which is why I made my earlier post about this constituting a change to contract conditions, which they cannot force anyone to accept.


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## BigTom (Feb 13, 2014)

fractionMan said:


> I don't see how this can be legal.  It's bad enouigh, but they could also change their insurance to have huge excess policies (say 99% of a claim or 50k or whatever), saving themselves almost all the insurance and passing on the cost to the workers.





equationgirl said:


> This suggests that if it's not in current contracts, such a change would have to be agreed:
> 
> http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=1002215
> 
> Personally I'd want very clear definitions of how much I would be expected to pay and under what circumstances it would be payable by an employee. If they're going to take it out of your salary I'd want a minimum of one month's notice.



Yep, this is the paragraph from my Labour Research Department Law at Work 2011 book that I took to mean they can do this:

"Deductions for other reasons, including dishonesty, poor work or misconduct, can also only be made if the worker has agreed in advance in writing to the deduction. But the agreement must be specific and clear and made before any incident giving rise to a deduction"

So I think they were going to make her pay the excess but realised that wasn't legal so have said this will be in place from now on, in an email. Almost everyone is out of the office tomorrow, hopefully no-one has replied accepting that, I will have to talk to them next week, don't have personal emails unfortunately so will have to get that first. 
(although I don't think the email stated the specific amount of the excess which I think needs to be stated so maybe not binding anyway)

Biggest problem in challenging this is that people are still in their probation period, we're all on fixed term contracts (it's a funded project until March 2015 so this is understandable as they have no idea if there will still be an office in Birmingham after it ends)




8115 said:


> Eeek.
> 
> Legally (scratches head) this is a change to your working terms and conditions.  And it's fairly significant, given that I (for instance) couldn't afford to pay £250 if that was the excess for damage.
> 
> Consult your union, natch.



Yep definitely and going to consult but I think the legal position will be that it's a change to t&cs but as long as we agree with it, it's all nice and legal 

If they changed the excess though, then we'd have to agree again I reckon, hence I think a specific amount needs to be stated.


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## weltweit (Feb 13, 2014)

equationgirl said:


> I know. Which is why I made my earlier post about this constituting a change to contract conditions, which they cannot force anyone to accept.


Well the company could demand it and the workforce would have to decide if they accepted it. Personally I think it is a pretty mean demand and I would definitely think less of the company because of it, and think twice about driving for the company at all.


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## 8115 (Feb 13, 2014)

BigTom said:


> Yep definitely and going to consult but I think the legal position will be that it's a change to t&cs but as long as we agree with it, it's all nice and legal
> 
> If they changed the excess though, then we'd have to agree again I reckon, hence I think a specific amount needs to be stated.


I am way out of my depth here, cesare may be able to help if not sick to the back teeth of being summonsed.  But yeah I would guess there should be reasonable notice of this change if not agreement by all staff.  Or summat.  There is law on this shizzle, maybe just getting increasingly confused by the whole outsourcing/ temp contract climate.


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## 8115 (Feb 13, 2014)

My vague guess would be:

Work insure the car and so cover the excess if they need to make a claim.

They want to ask you for deductions from your wages if you damage a car (and they have to pay an excess).

You *are not* paying the excess.

You are having a deduction made from your wages to cover costs (excess) incurred through an accident which was your fault (hopefully - what about if the damage is not your fault ie a scratch from another car which you discover when you return to a parked car).

Basically vector out how good a driver you are and whether you can afford it.  Also add in whether this change to work t and c's is legal.


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## equationgirl (Feb 13, 2014)

weltweit said:


> Well the company could demand it and the workforce would have to decide if they accepted it. Personally I think it is a pretty mean demand and I would definitely think less of the company because of it, and think twice about driving for the company at all.


If it was me, I'd probably do what the man in the link I posted suggested which was get business insurance on my car and put in a mileage claim each time.

It is a mean demand, but if people didn't agree to the change in the contractual terms it could not be unilaterally implemented.


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## weltweit (Feb 13, 2014)

equationgirl said:


> If it was me, I'd probably do what the man in the link I posted suggested which was get business insurance on my car and put in a mileage claim each time.


As an aside, when I was self employed I changed the insurance for my private car to cover me for work related journeys, the extra cost was actually not much at all.



equationgirl said:


> It is a mean demand, but if people didn't agree to the change in the contractual terms it could not be unilaterally implemented.


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## BigTom (Feb 13, 2014)

8115 said:


> I am way out of my depth here, cesare may be able to help if not sick to the back teeth of being summonsed.  But yeah I would guess there should be reasonable notice of this change if not agreement by all staff.  Or summat.  There is law on this shizzle, maybe just getting increasingly confused by the whole outsourcing/ temp contract climate.



As far as I remember from my rep training last year there is supposed to be 90 days notice on changes to t&cs, should look it up but not obvious from the index of the law at work book where it would be. 



8115 said:


> My vague guess would be:
> 
> Work insure the car and so cover the excess if they need to make a claim.
> 
> ...



Yeah I reckon that is what it is legally, a deduction that could come under the very broad term "poor work". Effectively it's paying the excess, but that's why I need to make sure there is an actual amount stated and not just whatever the excess is. I don't honestly have any hope of challenging this at the moment because too many people are on probation and no union. I may challenge it individually and refuse to drive, I'm not sure. At the moment I simply haven't replied to the email so I haven't accepted the change, nor have I challenged it yet.

I have messaged one of my colleagues on facebook asking for a personal email and to forward the message on to other people (except our manager) though, so at the very least I can make sure there is an actual amount stated. Maybe then when the excess gets raised at some point we can have more of a base to work together to challenge it.
Would love to challenge it on my own and be excepted from this rule. I do a very good job and they know I'm really good at it and would be hard to replace so as an individual I'm in a relatively strong position, and although I'd really like to continue to work for the company after this funding ends, I'm not terrified of losing my job. The woman who scraped the van, she's on probation and just out of university, in her first job. I'm sure she won't want to challenge this and that's totally understandable.


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## BigTom (Feb 13, 2014)

equationgirl said:


> If it was me, I'd probably do what the man in the link I posted suggested which was get business insurance on my car and put in a mileage claim each time.
> 
> It is a mean demand, but if people didn't agree to the change in the contractual terms it could not be unilaterally implemented.



Would love to do that, would be a fantastic way to avoid this, but won't work for me, I don't have a car and it's all vans at work, car would be useless.


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## 8115 (Feb 13, 2014)

BigTom Unless the job is mainly driving based like delivery driving I'd be surprised if it could fall under poor work.


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## BigTom (Feb 13, 2014)

8115 said:


> BigTom Unless the job is mainly driving based like delivery driving I'd be surprised if it could fall under poor work.



The job isn't mainly driving, the company does cycle training so the vans are either taking lots of bikes to a training event or lots of things for promotional events, so the driving is an essential part of most peoples' jobs (I work in the office so don't have to drive often but it is in my job description). I've no idea if there is a legal definition of poor work, it just seems like the kind of phrase that gets included so that there's something really broad that almost anything can fall under it. I will look further into it though.


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## equationgirl (Feb 13, 2014)

BigTom said:


> The job isn't mainly driving, the company does cycle training so the vans are either taking lots of bikes to a training event or lots of things for promotional events, so the driving is an essential part of most peoples' jobs (I work in the office so don't have to drive often but it is in my job description). I've no idea if there is a legal definition of poor work, it just seems like the kind of phrase that gets included so that there's something really broad that almost anything can fall under it. I will look further into it though.


But van driver training should still be offered by the company and refresher courses given on a regular basis, especially if the van driver does it infrequently.


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## BigTom (Feb 13, 2014)

equationgirl said:


> But van driver training should still be offered by the company and refresher courses given on a regular basis, especially is the van driver does it infrequently.



Yes, I'm definitely thinking that I will say that if they are going to ask this then they have a responsibility to offer more training than me for about half an hour. Gives me an extra basis for refusing to accept the change if/when they say no


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## equationgirl (Feb 13, 2014)

BigTom said:


> Yes, I'm definitely thinking that I will say that if they are going to ask this then they have a responsibility to offer more training than me for about half an hour. Gives me an extra basis for refusing to accept the change if/when they say no


Sometimes I think these changes are thought up by someone who thinks it's an easy win in terms of reducing cost to the company, not realising that it could open up a potentially much larger liability issue if proper training isn't given etc.


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## 8115 (Feb 13, 2014)

BigTom said:


> The job isn't mainly driving, the company does cycle training so the vans are either taking lots of bikes to a training event or lots of things for promotional events, so the driving is an essential part of most peoples' jobs (I work in the office so don't have to drive often but it is in my job description). I've no idea if there is a legal definition of poor work, it just seems like the kind of phrase that gets included so that there's something really broad that almost anything can fall under it. I will look further into it though.


That ain't poor work in my book   For me poor driving = poor work, driving has to be a majority of the work.


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## purenarcotic (Feb 13, 2014)

Would a call to ACAS be of use?  Just in terms of the legalities of the situation I mean.  It sounds a bit of a raw deal for the employee.


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## BigTom (Feb 13, 2014)

purenarcotic said:


> Would a call to ACAS be of use?  Just in terms of the legalities of the situation I mean.  It sounds a bit of a raw deal for the employee.



next port of call after my union


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## equationgirl (Feb 13, 2014)

BigTom said:


> next port of call after my union


Might also be worth asking the employer to clearly articulate why exactly they want the employees to shoulder the cost of the excess. Is it really happening so often it's impacting the bottom line, for example? What is the cost-benefit analysis behind the decision?

And the value of the excess must be clearly stated and capped at a reasonable amount.


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## StoneRoad (Feb 13, 2014)

and if the amount of the excess is significant, I think that they should be able to spread the cost out over several months rather than in a lump sum. But I still think that it is nasty policy to implement.
Although the employer's logic might be an attempt to encourage better driving - but they should offer training....


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## UnderAnOpenSky (Feb 13, 2014)

StoneRoad said:


> Although the employer's logic might be an attempt to encourage better driving - but they should offer training....



We were to that it was because people treated works cars with less respect then they're own. 

To be fair given its current state you'd have to hit it pretty hard for someone to even notice.


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## BigTom (Feb 14, 2014)

Have started an email conversation on private emails with half my office, going to accumulate other email addresses as I can. Will be meeting my union tomorrow and calling ACAS today if I can get away from my manager (mobile phone is fucked  )


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## Teaboy (Feb 14, 2014)

If its company policy then its fine.

I worked for a car hire company and every employee got one free accident after that you had to pay the first £500, certainly made you take a bit of extra car.

Of course this didn't apply if the 3rd party took full liability.


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## ddraig (Feb 14, 2014)

Teaboy said:


> If its company policy then its fine.
> 
> I worked for a car hire company and every employee got one free accident after that you had to pay the first £500, certainly made you take a bit of extra *car*.
> 
> Of course this didn't apply if the 3rd party took full liability.


freudian!!


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## muscovyduck (Feb 23, 2014)

So what happened?


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## BigTom (Feb 23, 2014)

nothing yet really. Advice from IWW union is that they can legally make this deduction (if agreed to beforehand etc). 
They haven't given us anything to sign yet, so there's a 45 day consultation period after that happens, but before it does we are either going to write a joint letter to our manager, or meet with her and discuss the issue, and hopefully basically tell them to fuck off or we won't drive the vans (means no business for them), leading to them reconsidering and withdrawing the clause. I will keep you all informed. My first bit of workplace organising this is, not intentionally exactly (I didn't go looking for an issue to organise around, this just came along) but I just realised that's what it is, hopefully will get some in the office joining IWW off the back of this but as long as we get the clause withdrawn I will be very happy.

Just herding cats at the moment though, it's hard via an email conversation to get agreement, some people don't email but come and talk to me personally, I try to present some options and ask people their preference but then someone else chips in with another helpful suggestion as to what action to take. I will get there though, sometime this week I hope.


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## stuff_it (Feb 23, 2014)

equationgirl said:


> Might also be worth asking the employer to clearly articulate why exactly they want the employees to shoulder the cost of the excess. Is it really happening so often it's impacting the bottom line, for example? What is the cost-benefit analysis behind the decision?
> 
> And the value of the excess must be clearly stated and capped at a reasonable amount.


When my mate was a van courier in London work even payed half of his parking tickets as they accepted it was a part of the job.


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## BigTom (Apr 16, 2014)

I just thought I'd post a non-update to this thread. I asked for a meeting with our manager and she suggested we wait until we see the actual policy which seemed reasonable so I accepted, but the policy has not appeared yet, it's been about 6 weeks I think since I asked for the meeting, a couple of months since we were told it would be happening so now I'm wondering if they are actually going to introduce it, and if not whether they never intended to or decided it wasn't worth annoying us by doing it.
Also, no-one has joined a union


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## equationgirl (Apr 16, 2014)

BigTom said:


> I just thought I'd post a non-update to this thread. I asked for a meeting with our manager and she suggested we wait until we see the actual policy which seemed reasonable so I accepted, but the policy has not appeared yet, it's been about 6 weeks I think since I asked for the meeting, a couple of months since we were told it would be happening so now I'm wondering if they are actually going to introduce it, and if not whether they never intended to or decided it wasn't worth annoying us by doing it.
> Also, no-one has joined a union


Shame about the non-joining of the union but it does sounds quietly promising that the policy might die


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