'Unfair' to sack thirties driver
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• A Manchester industrial tribunal says a driver was sacked unfairly for failing to hand in his tachograph charts, but it says he is not entitled to any compensation.
The tribunal said the driver, B W Richards, had made a deliberate attempt to mislead them.
Richards had, on his own admission, previously been convicted of tachograph offences, and the company, Beanstalk Ltd, was convicted as a result of his actions. Future conduct of a similar kind could jeopardise the company's operator's licence and Richards was given a written warning that any future breach of the regulations would lead to instant dismissal. He was told that in future he must hand in his tachograph charts weekly.
Richards' charts were not always handed in weekly. When warned, he mended his ways temporarily. The tribunal felt that the company could have been more forceful and given Richards more specific warnings about those failures.
The company dismissed Richards when over 30 charts were recovered from the cab of his vehicle. Some were outside the 21-day statutory limit.
Its decision to sack Richards was made by the operations director without there being any disciplinary hearing so Mr Richards was not given any opportunity to state his case. That was a clear breach of the industria relations code of practice which the company was una to justify.
The tribunal concluded th the company had acted unreasonably in treating Richards' conduct as sufficie reason for dismissing him in manner that it did.
The tribunal said that Richards, knowing the seriousness of his conduct, liberately failed to conform t the company's proper requit ment for no good reason.
He was solely to blame fo his own dismissal and it assessed the contributory fa' at 100 per cent and consequently it awarded him no compensation.