Month: February 2024
The realm of human welfare or social work has some particular specialties that include primarily children, family, education, public health, physical and psychological well-being and drug addiction. It has been seen that the scale of job prospects related to social welfare has only increased over the past years, this has even been validated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that a social worker had around 642,000 jobs in hand back in 2008. The graph has certainly aggravated presently.
Since majority of individuals working in the circle of social betterment has some concerns regarding the industry they wish to be associated with, it has even been evaluated that around 54% of individuals were then working in the health and human welfare industries while the remaining 31% worked in government sponsored agencies at various levels. With this entire report of job opportunities available for people working in the social development continuum, it explicitly indicates that job prospects are at no dearth, when it comes to looking for a stable and financially secure professional career.
The nature of a profession such as social welfare services is such that employees are assigned to work in cities as well as suburbs. It is expected for a social welfare employee to find a job in rural vicinities, as the space to exhibit their professional concerns and skills is more extensive as compared to an urban area, which is already quite developed. This indicates that social welfare is a profession, which comes with a lot of responsibilities and challenges.
Earlier, it was believed that not all specialist areas of social betterment thrived in terms of job opportunities, and not all offered the same amount of professional working security. However, today, all areas of social work are increasing job opportunities, particularly by the private social welfare organizations. In fact, the increase of employment in this industry has been around 22% which is promising. This is likely to increase with the time owing to the aging child boomer populace which will, over the span of time, demand better health and social services.
Apart from the physical stability, mental & psychological stability and drug addiction are areas which are rapidly augmenting with job prospects. An increase of 20% has also been predicted by specialists as there is going to be a strong demand of services to counter such deteriorating circumstances.
Last but not the least, children and family along with education are areas that are actually excelling areas in the field of human welfare and betterment. In order to bring about a change, an anchor lies in the hand of social services, augmenting the protection for children and their families while at the same time, emphasizing on the local prevalence of education is what is going to instigate a progressive developmental scale in the society. Some of the specialized areas elaborated on indicate the fields that can be explored by social welfare employees to bring a progressive change in the society.
n the case of Mark Hone v Six Continents Retail Limited (2005), a pub landlord having collapsed due to overwork successfully sued his former employers in the County Court for breach of duty of care.
Mr Hone, the claimant, started working for Bass (now Six Continents) as a pub manager in 1995 and in 1998 was awarded “Pub Manager of the Year”. However, in 1999 he started working at The Old Moat House where he found himself working 13 hour days.
He repeatedly complained to his employers that he was overworked but the employers took no action. He had no assistant manager and other staff members, who left, including two chefs and an administrative worker, were never replaced.
Mr Hone, who had refused to sign a clause opting out of EU legislation that limits the number of hours an employee works, began suffering from headaches and insomnia. In May 2000, he collapsed at work suffering from an anxiety disorder. In 2004, Mr Hone sued Bass for breaching the duty of care owed to him as an employee.
The first instance court ( Swansea County Court ) held that:
Bass had not taken reasonable steps to ensure that Mr Hone did not work over 48 hours, which was likely to cause injury to his health, and that resources were available to employ more support staff for him; and
Bass should pay Mr Hone 21,000 in damages.
Six Continents (formerly Bass) appealed this decision to the Court of Appeal who upheld the Swansea County Court’s judgment.
Comment: This case highlights the importance of not imposing excessive working hours on employees and ensuring that employees have sufficient staff support.
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RT COOPERS, 2005. This Briefing Note does not provide a comprehensive or complete statement of the law relating to the issues discussed nor does it constitute legal advice. It is intended only to highlight general issues. Specialist legal advice should always be sought in relation to particular circumstances.
Many companies operating fleet who introduce a vehicle tracking system for the first time would, of course, be concerned in the impact on their employees when installing mobile workforce tracking or a GPS vehicle tracking across their entire operation.
The rise of commercial vehicle tracking across the relevant industries dependent on running the most cost-effective and efficient fleet they possibly can has meant many changes of working practice, not least for the vehicle drivers.
Introducing change of an employees working conditions, obviously requires great care to be taken, not least from a legal point of view and how it affects their individual contracts of employment.
Essentially, there are two key differences to be determined when instigating mobile workforce solutions:
Business use only or – Business and Personal use.
Business Use …
Fitting a vehicle tracker into a vehicle to be used only for day-to-day, strictly work related business, e.g. delivery van, it is recommended that employees driving the vehicle should be informed not only that the system will be fitted, but also why it is being fitted, how it works and exactly the nature of the data to be collected and what its use will be and how it is intended to benefit everyone at the company.
It is important that employees fully understand and appreciate all the objective reasons for wishing to obtain the information that will be provided from the system and why it is needed to help with business efficiency and improvement. Concerns and objections raised by employees obviously need to be discussed to reach agreement on fitting the system but legal advice should be sought if agreement cannot be reached.
Business and Personal use…
Essentially, the same considerations as in business use only but with the addition of taking into account that the system will provide data on the vehicles movements outside working time. Concern may be raised by employees that this data could be used to obtain information about their private lives and if so, could be seen as an infringement of their human rights.
Once again, it is strongly advised and to be made absolutely clear that the data collected by the system will only be accessed for data relating to working hours only, unless the vehicle is stolen or in an accident. Employees need to know as to who will have access to the data and its use for business.
Company contracts of employment should be redrawn so there should be clause which allows for the fitting and/or use of the system in any vehicles provide for company/personal use.