Urgent advice needed - potential gross misconduct

[Passe]

Looking for urgent advice on this situation.

DP works nights in a warehouse (9 months in, permanent contract)) on a forklift. Thankless backbreaking work where all the workers are treated appallingly.

6 months ago he accidentally clipped a pallet causing an immediate investigation and threats of gross negligence.

Last week, a similar thing happened, he was exhausted and must have taken his eye off the ball for a second.

He has been called to a disciplinary meeting on Friday afternoon (well after his last shift for the week) where he is convinced they are about to fire him. He has previously observed that a Friday afternoon seems to be the preferred date /time for firing as the company will have got a full week's work out of the employee.

If that is the case he thinks he should just resign up front rather than wait to be sacked.

I think that is a really bad thing to do, surely there are several steps to this process and he also says the whole place is a total H&S shambles.
We are also going through a really traumatic time at home with other issues.

What can he do? If he loses his job we will lose our house.

Best case scenario after 9 months is 1 week notice really. If he’s been dismissed for gross misconduct then no notice and no payment in lieu of notice.

Regarding reference, has he not had that chat during the dismissal meeting? He’s not going to get a good one obviously, he’d probably have been better trying to negotiate a set one (if they would have agreed to that as it’s unlikely in his situation). He’s not going to be able to lie about being sacked though.

I’m not sure that’s correct @Mrsttcno1 - lots of places will simply confirm dates worked and not go beyond that, precisely because they don’t want to lay themselves open either to claims of deliberately making it hard for someone to get another job or to claims from the new employer that actually X had terrible timekeeping and they never mentioned it.

They may write down, if asked the reason for leaving, “did not pass probation” but they also may not include that in the standard response.

NOT in the case of gross misconduct, especially in an instance such as this where the misconduct was on multiple occasions, poses a health and safety risk, and where the individual is planning on going to do the exact same job elsewhere.

In fact his current employer are pretty much forced to mention the incidents in a reference because to NOT mention it would absolutely breach the duty of care owed to the new employer and so they have potential come back on them for any issues/harm caused down the line.

Terrible timekeeping is vastly different to crashing a forklift.

@Mrsttcno1 my understanding from various OP posts was that he had been dismissed but not for gross misconduct.

If it was that cause, then I agree with you.

Being completely honest even if it wasn’t a strict gross misconduct dismissal, 2 serious incidents like this which cause a health and safety issue in the next place they would still have to declare in a reference really. If he was applying to another job in a sweet shop then no, but if another forklift job then yes as it’s absolutely relevant

While they can't revoke his licence themselves, they can report the incidents to the licensing body, do you know for sure they won't be doing that? Internal implies not, but I'd want to know for sure.

All worrying but all questions I will ask DH

Currently at work - at least one of us has a job!

OP, I suggest your DP approaches an agency - we have loads here who advertise 'immediate start' fork lift jobs ( we are near a big motorway network). Many of the companies do an induction day where candidates turn up with licenses, ID, Right to work documents and then take a drug test. Once all this is done they then start, so no references are taken up. However, many of the jobs aren't particularly attractive, night shifts, chilled environments or rotating shifts.
He'd get a job though.

Please tell me you're somewhere near East Anglia 😂

He should look on indeed, lots of agencies advertise there. DP has got jobs from there then effectively stuck with one agency after that for a while. Worth a look anyway.

Sadly not! West Mids.