12th August 2013, 08:22 PM
RedEarth Wrote:Is that really true or just an assumption? I'd have thought the first thing they would check is whether you were working according to their risk assessment or similar, and every contractor would presumably be responsible for their own insurance. Unless you just meant the main contractor on whose site the archaeologists were working.
true- each risk assessment would be assessed, though they all tend to be boiler plate to a degree. A CSCS card allows standardization, to a degree, of workplace safety- basically, when in doubt ask your supervisor. As most people have pointed out standardization has its drawbacks. However, when something bad does happen the person it happened to can't claim they were never told to ask their supervisor because it is an industry standard.
It is just another shield- look, industry standard is to wear steel toe boots at all times blah, blah, blah, blah. It insures that if a lawsuit or insurance claim, etc. does happen they can't play company H&S against each other. Look company B does it different and if company A had done it that way my client would not be injured. Again, mainly boiler plate stuff like wear a hard hat, don't run with scissors, don't feed the gremlins after midnight, don't get the gremlins wet, etc. but it makes the insurance companies happy and the lawyers so it is there. It also means that you as a worker should have known not to feed the gremlins, getting a CSCS card puts H&S on you. The company can lay blame on you or the CSCS people by saying look- he passed a test by a third party he should have known not to get the gremlins wet, not our problem.
Hope, that clears up what I meant by CSCS is mainly a legal dodge.