robroy:
Carryfast…I personally see your point, and see why (rightly or wrongly) you think you were treated unfairly .
However,.why is it such a surprise to you that employers basically do not give a [zb] about their employees?
Surely in your years in the job I would have thought at some time you would have picked up on that fact.
They are just that ‘employers’ not friends or family, they owe you nothing, to them you are there for a purpose, a number,.an arse in a driving seat, and in today’s job, that situation is in most cases,a bloody lot worse than it ever was,
What you want or prefer does not even come on to their radar.
You should have just accepted that and made the best of it for yourself (That is exactly what I personally do now) , or moved on to another employer.
Being forced to handball loose loaded artic loads, under more than just the threat of disciplinary action, which includes all the implications regarding a reference and not being able to sign on because you’ve left voluntarily, with no job to go to, is a bit more than just ‘unfair’.
Bearing in mind that this was a change in terms and conditions which I didn’t see coming and which was imposed virtually over night with an ultimatum to match.
Which part of I did ‘accept it’ because at that point I didn’t have a choice because I was already within the disciplinary process from the point when I’d refused to do it.
How do you ‘make the best of something’ which eventually predictably broke my back within a matter of months.
How do you move on to another employer when there is no employer to move on to.
Only at that point unemployment and a zb reference based on leaving under a disciplinary and obviously with no chance of signing on.
This is what happens when anyone destroys a work place precedent in my case it wasn’t a thick young driver it was the bleedin Union.
Oh and you seem to have missed the bit where the firm actually then put me back on a proper trunk run when it suited them and it was only at that point where the damage to my back done by the hub system work was starting to become apparent to me.Then confirmed by loads of hospital appointments and scans and then an offer of an operation at 30% + risk of coming out (a lot) worse than I went in like paralysed from waist down worse, or at best less mobility of the spine.
What then happened later is another story but it ended up in a zb storm of that trunk eventually being knocked on the head after a couple of years and me being expected to go back to hub system runs with all the implications of that.
At that point I had no choice but to face them down.Which believe it or not took my hospital records to turn yet another disciplinary, regarding refusal to carry out loading/unloading duties, into a medical issue ironically admittedly ‘contributed’ to by them and by implication the zb union.
Either way the odds were I was out of the job.
Either you see all that or you don’t it’s black and white there’s no place for devils advocate or sitting on the fence in that.
That ignorant young driver deserved all he got.Hopefully his references said sacked on health and safety grounds with extreme prejudice.No sympathy from me.
While no I don’t see the connection between a firm being in busines,
while pretending to prioritise the respect of its staff in doing so.
While then breaking the backs of those workers under threat of disciplinary.
While giving those like Switchlogic the type of work which could have avoided all that and given credence to their bs platitudes.
Bearing in mind as I said the 3 + 2 drawbar outfit I drove at the end could carry more stuff than a subby pulling a step frame artic anyway.
Strange zb.
What is certain is that trying to run away from these types of issues isn’t always an option.So you run to the next firm, assuming there is a convenient next firm to go to and it happens again then what.
If everything you say is true and accurate (no reason to assume otherwise btw) it sounds as if you had a good case, so why did you not get a good brief on them and hit them for compensation for work related injury ? Or maybe even constructive dismissal?
As for the Union, whether you thought they were any good or not, I would have thought that as long as you were fully paid up, they would be obliged to back you up on this.
Star down under.:
What was stopping you going to work for a subbie, CF?
Why would/should anyone want to throw away years of service seniority and the employment rights which go with it to start again from nothing with a different employer to do our own jobs within our own firm.
Oh I dunno, maybe to follow their dreams and not end up with a life full of disappointment? Maybe that.
Carryfast:
those like Switch who’ll then say it’s all my own fault.
It is, that you’ve convinced yourself it isn’t is a fairly masterful feat of self delusion.
No surprise you seem to have selectively left out the second paragraph.Now why would that be.Oh wait it doesn’t fit your narrative as usual made from the position if one person can make the leap from bus driver to UPS International Line Haul then I obviously could have done.Obviously not when 10 years + service and safe driving record with the firm by default didn’t cut it.
Considering how much of my life I put online your powers of comprehension really are terrible. Or is thinking one day I drove local buses and the next piloting a 750 round Europe one of your ‘poor me’ myths you tell yourself? Also a bit hilarious how you seem to think doing UPS trunks to Europe is the pinnacle of truck driving! I’ll let you in on a secret, it isn’t, it was actually rather unpopular at Virginia because our other intentional work was so much better.
My theory as to why you’ve had a disappointing career? You’re as insufferably annoying in real life as you are here so maybe you did have many interviews but scared them off. Also doing ten years on one night trunk run isn’t all that experience wise I’m afraid
switchlogic:
Considering how much of my life I put online your powers of comprehension really are terrible. Or is thinking one day I drove local buses and the next piloting a 750 round Europe one of your ‘poor me’ myths you tell yourself? Also a bit hilarious how you seem to think doing UPS trunks to Europe is the pinnacle of truck driving! I’ll let you in on a secret, it isn’t, it was actually rather unpopular at Virginia because our other intentional work was so much better.
My theory as to why you’ve had a disappointing career? You’re as insufferably annoying in real life as you are here so maybe you did have many interviews but scared them off. Also doing ten years on one night trunk run isn’t all that experience wise I’m afraid
Watch out for those splinters that fence has
This thread is hilarious between you two
switchlogic:
My theory as to why you’ve had a disappointing career? You’re as insufferably annoying in real life as you are here
Watch out for those splinters that fence has
This thread is hilarious between you two
They are like an old long term married couple, always sniping and bickering, but deep down love each other.
They should meet up, it’s a match made in heaven.
switchlogic:
My theory as to why you’ve had a disappointing career? You’re as insufferably annoying in real life as you are here
Watch out for those splinters that fence has
This thread is hilarious between you two
They are like an old long term married couple, always sniping and bickering, but deep down love each other.
They should meet up, it’s a match made in heaven.
Define ‘how’s ?.
It’s all there in the medical report I posted which the firm and the union relied on for termination of employment, based on my own doctor’s notes/hospital records.
Effectively it’s a like a structurally damaged bridge it’s still standing and other than occasional pain of varying severity you wouldn’t know there’s anything wrong with it, without looking at the X Rays and CT/MRI scans.
It’s been like that from the start.Bearing in mind I was actually working with it on direct trunking work after it had been diagnosed and shortly before while waiting for hospital appointments and scans and their results.
That’s another reason why employers’ liability insurance and state industrial injuries benefits are an irrelevance for that type of injury.
Ironically the first signs of pain from it started in the back of my upper leg, not my back, and after months of doing the job and at around the point when I was being moved from it back to trunking work. Certainly no idea at that point that my back was broke.So no identifiable causation so no claim just an admission from the employer of contributory causation so an extremely limited payout which didn’t even cover a redundancy payment.
It really takes a special type of stupid for anyone to hand ball truck loads voluntarily.
The resulting injuries and their effects aren’t covered by state industrial injuries benefits nor covered by employers’ liability insurance because causation generally can’t be proven.
The idea that anyone can even claim incapacity benefit with a ‘bad back’ is total bs.The ESA benefits test will wash them out unless they are paralysed from the neck down.
robroy:
If everything you say is true and accurate (no reason to assume otherwise btw) it sounds as if you had a good case, so why did you not get a good brief on them and hit them for compensation for work related injury ? Or maybe even constructive dismissal?
As for the Union, whether you thought they were any good or not, I would have thought that as long as you were fully paid up, they would be obliged to back you up on this.
Just to clarify.
The Union did start a claim with the union solicitor.All agreed that causation couldn’t be proved and all sides agreed to a limited compensation ( less than 5k ) based on an admission by the firm of contributing to the cause.
However anything more than that would obviously have resulted in a conflict of interest because the Union itself was implicated in putting me in that position against my protests and refusal.IE very similar but far worse than the situation in this case of the young driver putting his workmates in harms way.
This was later proven to me when the Union dropped another case which I then took personally up to Court of Appeal level v the DWP.Regarding the nature of manual handling injuries by definition generally being impossible to identify at the item/time/date level for industrial injuries benefits.
The union walked away from it at after losing the local DWP office level appeal stage leaving me to fight it out on my own.
The Appeals Court judges granted me the right to appeal v DWP but ordered no right of audience after that at that level for an appellant in person.It had to be a QC and I obviously didn’t have that type of cash also the costs awarded against me if I’d lost.The DWP offered to drop all their costs up to that point so I took the offer.
The union comes out of this not smelling of roses worse than even the firm.
They had a chance to get spinal injuries caused by manual handling recognised as being exempt from having to be ‘identifiable’ with that case, which they obviously dropped.Because they were implicated in forcing someone into that position against their will in the first place.
The moral of the story is that if you’ve got a workplace precedent, which protects workers from that type of injury, then defend it to the last.Especially in the case of the good guvnors who understand it and the reasons why it’s there.
switchlogic:
Considering how much of my life I put online your powers of comprehension really are terrible. Or is thinking one day I drove local buses and the next piloting a 750 round Europe one of your ‘poor me’ myths you tell yourself? Also a bit hilarious how you seem to think doing UPS trunks to Europe is the pinnacle of truck driving! I’ll let you in on a secret, it isn’t, it was actually rather unpopular at Virginia because our other intentional work was so much better.
My theory as to why you’ve had a disappointing career? You’re as insufferably annoying in real life as you are here so maybe you did have many interviews but scared them off. Also doing ten years on one night trunk run isn’t all that experience wise I’m afraid
Watch out for those splinters that fence has
This thread is hilarious between you two
Being at home all time it keeps me occupied and gets the brain working! And I’m trying to see if he ever does give up! He hasn’t ever yet but maybe I can push him there…
switchlogic:
My theory as to why you’ve had a disappointing career? You’re as insufferably annoying in real life as you are here
Watch out for those splinters that fence has
This thread is hilarious between you two
They are like an old long term married couple, always sniping and bickering, but deep down love each other.
They should meet up, it’s a match made in heaven.
TNUK dating service, who would have thought
Carryfast will need to come out of the closet he’s clearly in first…
Carryfast:
No surprise you seem to have selectively left out the second paragraph.Now why would that be.Oh wait it doesn’t fit your narrative as usual made from the position if one person can make the leap from bus driver to UPS International Line Haul then I obviously could have done.Obviously not when 10 years + service and safe driving record with the firm by default didn’t cut it.
Considering how much of my life I put online your powers of comprehension really are terrible. Or is thinking one day I drove local buses and the next piloting a 750 round Europe one of your ‘poor me’ myths you tell yourself? Also a bit hilarious how you seem to think doing UPS trunks to Europe is the pinnacle of truck driving! I’ll let you in on a secret, it isn’t, it was actually rather unpopular at Virginia because our other intentional work was so much better.
My theory as to why you’ve had a disappointing career? You’re as insufferably annoying in real life as you are here so maybe you did have many interviews but scared them off. Also doing ten years on one night trunk run isn’t all that experience wise I’m afraid
You call, an all too predictable broken back, ‘a disappointing career’.That shows the level of your 'comprehension.
Then you’ve got the nerve to call 15 years of night trunking with artics and drawbar outfits and years of plant haulage with a multilift and 38t fire truck test driving before that not ‘‘all that much experience wise’’ v flitting around among umpteen employers starting with a large history of driving buses.
As for that ‘experience’ let’s just say that a regular trunk to Milan and/or Paris with a 5 axle drawbar outfit would have been more commercially viable and more of a ‘pinnacle’ to me at that point in time.Than giving either job to a younger ex bus driver etc etc with a 4 axle artic, while breaking my back hand balling artic loads at zb Nuneaton.
With the win win that 15 years service could have turned into 35 years service and counting.
Which sort of contradicts their bs platitudes thanking me for 10 years service.
But then you seem to be on the side of the young driver in this case putting the health and careers of his workmates at risk playing the hero.Luckily their guvnor seems to be a lot better than mine was.I suppose that’s my fault too.
Just meant how is it now.
I agree backpain is tough and hard to prove for claims. My dad had sciatica and he was in constant agony for months.
I spent at least 4 years unloading trailers. It is hard work but you get used to it.
If I was you I would of gone as slow as possible. Parcel firms are all about speed. You take one parcel at a time and gentle place it on the belt and repeat. Haha, they’d of soon pulled you off unloading the trailer. I mean you would of have to of been a little careful not to go too slow but would of been effective.
That way they couldnt sack you for refusing orders and their only real option would of been to say your not physically capable of unloading trailers.
That would of opened a entire new avenue for you which would of required UPS to make reasonable adjustments etc etc.
That being said UPS had it pretty easy. When I was unloading trailers for Nightfreight it was much tougher. We’d have some trailers that were just full of fire doors and metal stillages containing lamposts and rolled up 3m long carpets. You were expected to carry them by yourself. I was quite often carrying over 100kg around the warehouse. Completely stupid of me to do but many of us who were able to do it did it.
Carryfast:
No surprise you seem to have selectively left out the second paragraph.Now why would that be.Oh wait it doesn’t fit your narrative as usual made from the position if one person can make the leap from bus driver to UPS International Line Haul then I obviously could have done.Obviously not when 10 years + service and safe driving record with the firm by default didn’t cut it.
Considering how much of my life I put online your powers of comprehension really are terrible. Or is thinking one day I drove local buses and the next piloting a 750 round Europe one of your ‘poor me’ myths you tell yourself? Also a bit hilarious how you seem to think doing UPS trunks to Europe is the pinnacle of truck driving! I’ll let you in on a secret, it isn’t, it was actually rather unpopular at Virginia because our other intentional work was so much better.
My theory as to why you’ve had a disappointing career? You’re as insufferably annoying in real life as you are here so maybe you did have many interviews but scared them off. Also doing ten years on one night trunk run isn’t all that experience wise I’m afraid
You call, an all too predictable broken back, ‘a disappointing career’.That shows the level of your 'comprehension.
Then you’ve got the nerve to call 15 years of night trunking with artics and drawbar outfits and years of plant haulage with a multilift and 38t fire truck test driving before that not ‘‘all that much experience wise’’ v flitting around among umpteen employers starting with a large history of driving buses.
As for that ‘experience’ let’s just say that a regular trunk to Milan and/or Paris with a 5 axle drawbar outfit would have been more commercially viable and more of a ‘pinnacle’ to me at that point in time.Than giving either job to a younger ex bus driver etc etc with a 4 axle artic, while breaking my back hand balling artic loads at zb Nuneaton.
With the win win that 15 years service could have turned into 35 years service and counting.
Which sort of contradicts their bs platitudes thanking me for 10 years service.
But then you seem to be on the side of the young driver in this case putting the health and careers of his workmates at risk playing the hero.Luckily their guvnor seems to be a lot better than mine was.I suppose that’s my fault too.
Awwwwww you poor sweetpea. I’m so very sorry that some boxes broke your back and ended your career.
A car crash broke mine, amougst many other things, also left me unable to walk. Suffer a lot of pain some days and not as mobile as I once was, can’t reach behind me at all, getting something off the floor is an impossibility and have to be careful when walking as still unsteady on my feet but hey ho you just adapt. Hopefully be back driving this year.
I’m sorry you’re obviously quite a feeble chap
Carryfast:
As for that ‘experience’ let’s just say that a regular trunk to Milan and/or Paris with a 5 axle drawbar outfit would have been more commercially viable and more of a ‘pinnacle’ to me at that point in time.Than giving either job to a younger ex bus driver etc etc with a 4 axle artic, while breaking my back hand balling artic loads at zb Nuneaton.
I love how much me starting out on buses bugs you Yup, a younger* bus driver has more driving experience than you’ll ever have. My sympathies.
(*younger now not young? To be fair last time I drove a service bus I was 21 so young works)
Carryfast - I’ve a new video out. A trip to Italy. So you can live vicariously through me then come on here and point out everything I’ve done wrong using your vast experience delivering parcels or parking up fire trucks at the factory. Happy viewing www.lorry-driver.com
Carryfast:
The idea that anyone can even claim incapacity benefit with a ‘bad back’ is total bs.The ESA benefits test will wash them out unless they are paralysed from the neck down.
But you broke your back didn’t you? As you’ve started telling us all of a sudden
I am quite enjoying following this thread, it gives me something to do while the pubs get restocked and I get my vaccine.
I wonder how many broken backs UPS have to answer to. I know a couple of senior execs who left United Carriers and started working there. Maybe they will know the figures. Carryfast was badly treated.
Some things keep repeating themselves though, the fact that the senior managers at most companies have bought the wrong spec vehicles according to Carryfast, the engines being wrong, crap, unreliable and unfit for purpose. The jobs he had, gritter driver, fire pump designer and line haul driver, we called them depot trunks. Carryfast was badly treated.
Romance and Carryfast, it sort of passed him by because of his strange belief that a young woman was to marry and procreate, his chosen woman had other ideas and escaped his clutches. Carryfast was badly treated.
Employment and Carryfast, it sort of passed him by because of this strange belief that the world owed him a living, he couldn’t get a European job in the 70’s and 80’s when there were thousands of jobs around, you could do a trip a week in a different lorry if that floated your boat, or you could stay with the same company for 30 years. Carryfast was badly treated.
I admire Luke, he had a very lowly start as a bus driver in Wales and had to move to another country to drive a 750 Volvo all over Europe.
Carryfast:
The idea that anyone can even claim incapacity benefit with a ‘bad back’ is total bs.The ESA benefits test will wash them out unless they are paralysed from the neck down.
But you broke your back didn’t you? As you’ve started telling us all of a sudden
Obviously no comprehension that the ‘all work test’ will wash out anyone who effectively isn’t paralysed from the neck down.
A ‘broken’ back lower down ( including disc degeneration/damage interfering/potentially interfering with the spinal cord ) won’t cut it.Nor will anything really just based on diagnosis of damage as opposed to literal physical incapacity to actually physically move and do stuff.
That’s also how you can end up declared as unfit/unsafe for work by employers on H and S grounds based on diagnosis but not declared as eligible for Incapacity Benefits on ‘disability’ grounds.As shown in the medical report which understandably put me out of the job.That isn’t sufficient evidence for an Incapacity/ESA Benefit claim.
As I said back injuries, caused by unidentifiable, ■■■■■■■■■■ effects, of manual handling of loads, are the perfect storm of career ending and life changing injuries with no cover/compensation available from anywhere for the victims, both in terms of the ‘causation’ hurdle and the definition of ‘disability’.
Wheel Nut:
I wonder how many broken backs UPS have to answer to. I know a couple of senior execs who left United Carriers and started working there. Maybe they will know the figures.
From memory I ended up with an ex United Carriers manager then made ‘driver supervisor’ under UPS.Not exactly a senior exec.
He was known as anything from the fat controller to the Rottweiler and Zb off Bob taken from Thunderbirds FAB.
I also seem to remember an incident in which he was rumoured to have fitted up a C and D driver shop steward with a disciplinary and sacked him.
Then he bottled out of a ‘meeting’ ‘outside of the work environment’ with said driver to settle the issue obviously worried about his own Health and Safety more than anyone else’s.You seem to live up to anything that comes out of that zb firm no good will come of it.
but hey ho you just adapt. Hopefully be back driving this year.
