pregnant and dangerous job, please help!

Feed_The_Reaper

Your all talking rubbish, they have to guarentee her safety from risks in the workplace they know are likely to happen. That doesnt take into consideration ACTS OF GOD!!!

If she gets hit by a truck its outside of their control and outside of their duty to protect her, but if they are placing her in a room with a patient with a history of violent attacks as part of her employment then they do have to guarentee her safety! If they are saying there are no risks and she is unhappy with that situation then she has the right to write in letter to them stating her concerns and demanding they review it or she will take further action to have it reviewed by a tribunal who will decide if her job position carries a risk that is unacceptable for a pregnant woman to do.

Too many people go off topic about things they have no idea about!

Feisty..... I think you should write the letter.... dont go for verbal communication because its not worth the paper its printed on and is why you are in this position off them offering/retracting offers to you left right and centre.

Write the letter and it will have more power and less chance for them to mess around. What you can do then is tell them you have sent the letter to them and discuss it verbally while they receive and discuss your letter. Then if they come to an arrangement your happy with verbally ask them to put it in writing for you to review and then sign.

If you spend time doing verbal first, you can have them back out of any agreement yet again and you will still have to do the writing thing again! Plus if you have it in writing your unhappy with the risk assessment and your safety in the job now your pregnant and they are not dealing with the risks enough, it will work in your favour in the long run should it go more serious such as a tribunal against them.

Then if you are getting nowhere with the letter, you can take it further like to a tribunal or other instance.

But dont waste time any more hoping this and that might get sorted as its extra stress on you and stress can harm your child as well as you, so get on with the letter getting CAB or someone to help you put down what needs to be said and get it processed ASAP so it can be put to rest and people can get on with their jobs and lives much happier

tizerbelle

Feed_The_Reaper wrote: »

Your all talking rubbish, they have to guarentee her safety from risks in the workplace they know are likely to happen. That doesnt take into consideration ACTS OF GOD!!!

If she gets hit by a truck its outside of their control and outside of their duty to protect her, but if they are placing her in a room with a patient with a history of violent attacks as part of her employment then they do have to guarentee her safety! If they are saying there are no risks and she is unhappy with that situation then she has the right to write in letter to them stating her concerns and demanding they review it or she will take further action to have it reviewed by a tribunal who will decide if her job position carries a risk that is unacceptable for a pregnant woman to do.

Too many people go off topic about things they have no idea about!

And welcome to MSE to you too! No employer can guarantee an employee's safety (pregnant or not) and that is why I pointed this out. It is specifically why the HSE don't use the word guarantee. The requirement on the employer is to remove significant risk as I showed in my post. I used an extreme example to get the point across.

There is a world of difference between guaranteeing and removing significant risk. Note that word - significant. Not all risks have to be removed / have adjustments made for. There is a risk of paper cuts if they move her into an office role but they wouldn't actually have to do anything about that.

It won't do Feisty any good to have the facts behind her rights incorrect. She needs to know what her rights are and what her employers duties and responsibilities are. If she doesn't understand this, she could cause herself more problems than she resolves.

sukysue

I think the op is ()at least to me giving the impression she wants to have her cake and eat it iyswim, sorry if I have the wrong end of the stick but you do seem very keen to take the easy way out and be on paid leave ...... not fair on your company or your fellow workers. Only not much positivity going on here towards meeting the employers halfway imho.

debtdesperado

Hmmm. Interesting.

So, having established that the duty of an employer is to protect pregnant employees from reasonable risk, the first question is what is a reasonable risk?

I would suggest that protecting the employee from papercuts, or being run over outside the place of work is not a reasonable risk.

However, working with potentially violent adults who may attack her and compromise her pregnancy would seem to be a reasonable risk, and therefore the employer has a duty to protect her.

Next point then is how the employer tries to protect her.

First option would seem to be to remove her from working with the violent adults entirely, ie same location, same hours, same pay, but sat in office doing paperwork.

So you need to establish exactly why they can't offer you this. You said above that this is due to the fire escape not being suitable? Is there another room you could sit in? Could you not work from home? These are questions both for the employer and the employee to answer together, eg if your job is caring for adults, then it's not an office job so there might not be anything for you to do and therefore it would almost be a completely different job, one which you might not have the skills for anyway.

The next alternative would be a different location, doing caring work rather than office work, but with less or non-violent charges. The hours might be adjusted but same pay. So you might work with adults who are less violent - in an OAP home, for example - or you might not be a carer at all and do paperwork. Again, this is for the employer and employee to decide together.

You said that they have suggested head office, but the drive is too far, and that you have suggested working in the other house, but there aren't the right hours. I would ask your employer if there is someone at the other house that you could swap with. I think you said above that this isn't likely because these other people can't work at your house. It might be reasonable to adjust your hours so the total stays the same, but when they are worked is different. Normally employers reserve the right to make 'reasonable' changes to working hours in contracts of employment, so check yours and you will probably find that they can suggest changes. What is reasonable here is question of degree.

The point is that they have to do something but if you have circumvented the whole discussion by saying that you want to stay in the house where you are, knowing all the risks (which you do know because, after all, you raised the matter initially), this is why they would have produced a risk assessment and asked you to sign it. Then if an adult does attack you, and it causes problems to your pregnancy, they have a defence if you sued them and will not be found negligent. This is entirely reasonable. It is almost irrelevant whether you sign this or not, as I would expect that a note will have been made that the risk discussion took place, and that you refused to sign. Therefore if something does happen in the meantime, they will produce this as evidence that they were trying to do all they could to protect you, but you were stalling.

It does sound as if you are blocking all suggestions, hoping that eventually they will decide that the only possible option is for you to stay at home on full pay.

If there is a real risk to your baby from these adults, then surely that should be your priority, and therefore you should be trying to get yourself out of there asap by being ready to compromise, not faffing about trying to find someone who will magically whisk you out of there and onto your sofa on full pay for 7 months. The longer you delay, the worse it looks, to be honest.

Unfortunately, what will probably happen instead is that you will be (legally) pushed out of your job... the economic climate is against you (and us all) at the moment, and there are so many people out of work and desperate to work, unfortunately organisations are a lot less tolerant of 'problem' employees. Personally, I would be thinking of this at your next discussion with your employer and be prepared to be a bit more accomodating....

vwelsh13

I work with learning difficulties/aggressive/challenging behaviour etc..you cannot guarantee to protect someone from injury in the workplace because at the end of the day you can't see the future...how silly, the only 100% guarentee would be to remove the worker from the workplace. You can try to remove risks based on previous incidents but what provoked a reaction from someone last week may not next week etc.

I think the world is going a little bit mad life has risks so deal with it!

dickydonkin

Feisty_Fairy wrote: »

I went to the CAB and also spoke to ACAS, HSE and the lady at the CAB spoke to warwickshire workers rights, all have said the risk assessment is shoddy and not good enough, i apparently could take them to a tribunal over just that (obviously i wont) i have been advised to write a letter of grievance stating that im not happy with the risk assessment and take it from there, but i think i will just do it verbally to begin with, any comments?

I have been told that they have to GUARANTEE my safety which i dont think they can, OR find me an altenative job OR suspend me with full pay, so i need to tell them that!:(

I find it difficult to believe that "ALL" the bodies you mentioned above have stated that the risk assessment is 'shoddy' and 'not good enough'. For them to come to that conclusion, they must have visited the workplace and be fully aware of what significant risks you and your unborn child would be exposed to.

It would be unlikely that the HSE would describe a risk assessment as either shoddy or not good enough. A risk assessment has to be 'suitable and sufficient' and whether the one in question is indeed fit for purpose, this could only be determined by actually seeing the workplace - unless the assessment is generic - which in itself does not breach any regulations, however, I always prefer site specific risk assessments as every environment and the people who in them may have different requirements that may need to be considered.

I also would question the health and safety competence of the other people (other than the HSE obviously) who have questioned the suitability of the assessment.

I don't know how someone can be taken to a tribunal for a risk assessment that may not be suitable or sufficient - that bit is confusing.

As for guaranteeing your safety - that is nigh on impossible - what the company have to do is ideally eliminate the risk (usually difficult) or reduce the risk to an acceptable level to you and others 'so far as is reasonably practicable' and those risks with recommendations or controls should be highlighted on the assessment. I have asked previously what the control measures actually were in the assesment - this has not yet been forthcoming.

Based on your post above, there has been some ambiguous advice given IMO.

As I mentioned very early in this thread, as it seems the biggest risk to you and your baby is the threat of violence - this can easily be remedied by removing the person from the risk - which others have also sensibly suggested.

Due to the unpredictability of this 'foreseeable risk', I would certainly suggest eliminating this risk by not exposing you and your unborn child to the very real potential of harm.

Whether you would accept that is another matter - although I would likely insist on it - whether you liked it or not. Your welfare and that of your unborn child would take precedent - not to mention the implications of litigation/prosecution should there be an incident.

Could I ask on what basis you are going to argue that you are 'not happy' with the risk assessment? For example, what does it include (or omit) that you may feel may place you at harm - or does it contain aspects you just don't want to hear? You potentially could have a valid argument if there are aspects of the workplace and its risks that have not been addressed in the assessment or if there are any doubts about the competence of the person undertaking the asessment.

Then if an adult does attack you, and it causes problems to your pregnancy, they have a defence if you sued them and will not be found negligent.

It is likely that by allowing the OP to work in an environment where a foreseeable risk has been identified would compound the negligence should she become injured. There could possibly be an element of contributory negligence as well - I don't know.

Certainly if I was the duty holder of this business, I would not run the risk of allowing an employee to work in an environment that she and the employer are fully aware that there is a risk of harm. It seems the OP needs to give a little here and maybe if she concentrated her efforts in attempting to resolve this with her employer rather than contact all of the agencies named above, there could be a satisfactory outcome.

cindy101

sorry i have not read all posts but what is garden leave?

would this mean you stay at home till you had your baby on full pay and then you would be on maternity leave after?

if so who covers your job ?
do the company hire someone else for 1 1/2 years and pay them a full wage to do your job till you come back,

plz can someone explain,,

Wonder_Womble

Hey Feisty,

Any update on what is happening with your risk assessment?

Feisty_Fairy

Hi all, well i had a meeting with them yesterday and they eventually realised that its not safe enough for me to work in the house i normally work in, so because they had no other option but send me on garden leave because there are no positions anywhere else, they eventually did some rejigging and put me in the less challenging house!:D:j

They do still have to do some risk assessments on certain things, ie wheelchair usage/lifting etc and certain clients because there is one that has some challenging behaviour, also they mentioned taking one of the clients swimming, one of the other staff said they were kicked albeit unintentionally while taking the client swimming so maybe i should mention this, what do you think peeps?

Thanks to all of you who had some nice and helpful replies rather than have a go at me for trying to protect my unborn baby when my company simply wouldnt meet ME halfway:mad:, it all will hopefully work out ok in the end!:)

Feisty_Fairy

Hi all, just a quick update re my situation, well i did 1st shift in the other house today and suprise suprise no risk assessment done yet!:mad:, and i got hit by a client, in the stomach!!, i am not supposed to work with her as she does have challenging behaviour, i was in the kitchen and she came in and attempted to drink dish water from a dirty cup so i said dont drink that i will get you some fresh and she hit me, then tried to bite me and chased me down the hall trying to hit me again!:eek: So much for being safer in this house eh!:eek: