ARC contract challenge
Page 10
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
by Miles Brignall • An owner-driver with ARC Southern is threatening to write to the Office of Fair Trading to challenge the contract the company has with its concrete mixer franchisees.
Driver Mathew O'Reilly, who has worked with ARC for nine years at its Silvertown, London depot says the company has started making drivers comply with a clause in their contracts that states if a load is rejected by the site manager for quality reasons, the driver making the delivery will not get paid.
"It's ridiculous—the drivers have nothing to do with the mixing process and just deliver it. There has even been talk of charging the francisees to dump the rejected con crete," he says.
O'Reilly has written to ARC to complain about the firm's stance and says he will refer the position to the Office of Fair Trading's unfair contracts division if he fails to get a satisfactory response.
But an ARC spokesman says the contract is not new and the only thing that has changed is an attempt to get the drivers to take more resposibility for their loads, and particularly the paperwork.
He contends that the drivers can influence their loads during carriage and says that they are only being asked to observe the contracts they signed.