Is this legal???

[Fozzy]

Ive been in management for some time now and our company and we recently changed our policy on the way drivers are disciplined for incidents causing damage. First of all the damage has to be preventable and frankly, its rarely non-preventable. My boss would ALWAYS (no matter what the corporate people would tell him) tell the drivers that they were going to pay for damages. This as explained by corporate is NOT LEGAL! There are three things that a company can do to an employee when they cause damage to company property. 1. suspend the driver for X amount of time. This does nothing for either party, the driver is not generating revenue nor is anything getting charged off for the damage. 2. reduce the rate of pay for the employee for a set amount of time (this accomplishes what the company wants and keeps the employee working even if less happy) or 3. Fire the employee. This is an option depending on the driver, their attitude and or their record of tearing stuff up. The new policy is basically taken from the driver's safety bonus. Depending on the infraction and the damage, the drivers may still end up getting some part of their bonus.

[Orangetxguy]

Ive been in management for some time now and our company and we recently changed our policy on the way drivers are disciplined for incidents causing damage. First of all the damage has to be preventable and frankly, its rarely non-preventable. My boss would ALWAYS (no matter what the corporate people would tell him) tell the drivers that they were going to pay for damages. This as explained by corporate is NOT LEGAL! There are three things that a company can do to an employee when they cause damage to company property. 1. suspend the driver for X amount of time. This does nothing for either party, the driver is not generating revenue nor is anything getting charged off for the damage. 2. reduce the rate of pay for the employee for a set amount of time (this accomplishes what the company wants and keeps the employee working even if less happy) or 3. Fire the employee. This is an option depending on the driver, their attitude and or their record of tearing stuff up. The new policy is basically taken from the driver's safety bonus. Depending on the infraction and the damage, the drivers may still end up getting some part of their bonus.

That last part of Fozzy's statement is everything in the nut shell. Those things, especially the one's I highlighted, are the most common punishments "Legitimate" companies do.

The single most common occurrence of punishment is "Time off, without pay" coupled with a loss of the "safety bonus". Now....some companies may only hand out a couple hundred dollars a year, per qualifying employee. Not a whole lot of incentive to be totally safe, for some people......the kind of people who see causing minor damage as a way to get time off to go fishing or whatever.

Other companies though, can get bonus money up into the thousands of dollars, based on safety performance by terminal, by region, by country and even by global performance. My last safety bonus from ARCO was over $7,000. That was with a 14 year record of safe driving. If I recall correctly, my first bonus from ARCO was in the $600 range, for 8 months of safe driving as a company driver, combined with my prior record of 10 years safe driving before ARCO hired me. Yeah....in 1989 they actually looked back at a new hire's performance at other jobs. I saw company drivers at ARCO, who received much larger safety bonuses year in and year out, because of their company seniority. One 28+ year driver used his bonus each year to take his wife home to Japan each January. That isn't cheap.


The truly sad part............in 2003..................that program went away...............................due to a lack of interest by the "New" company........BP.