Immunosupressants vs job requiring Public Transport

kurgon

The point made earlier about equality impact assessment is probably your best bet. This has to be done by law and may be your best recourse at this stage. Access to work have had their provisions and support severely restricted but may at least be able to offer advise also. Google them and contact your local office.

GlasweJen

Lum the point is if you're severely immunocompromised by your drugs the health and safety legislation wouldn't allow you to return to work until all of that is in place. I can't go back to work until Monday when my entire core team plus anyone we use for cover is screened and the results known. The MD has had to find a different site to conduct interviews on because although my branch is the biggest and best equipt it isn't fair to tour people around it and put me at risk.

I've had immunologists, transplant specialists etc demand paper work to prove that the company has installed various concoctions to the site in addition to the colleagues being screened and a more thorough medical history taken. Even though I work 1 to 1 in most instances it would be a disaster to have me at work without all this in place apparently. And I work for a small chain of independent opticians it's cost them a fortune!

As I've said, drop the immune card as you've been there too long with too much time elapsed from a major incident (septicaemia in 2009, 9 months since last big flare up). Try to negotiate it into your relocation deal.

ETA I think we'll be the only opticians for miles around that requires everyone to wash their hands before trying on glasses!

Lum

There wont be any relocation deal as the distance, on paper, is not all that much.

Maybe it would be best to push the carer angle. If there's an emergency and I can't get out of Cardiff for an hour, to go pick her up after a fall, that would be bad.

poet123

Lum wrote: »

There wont be any relocation deal as the distance, on paper, is not all that much.

Maybe it would be best to push the carer angle. If there's an emergency and I can't get out of Cardiff for an hour, to go pick her up after a fall, that would be bad.

I am not sure what you actually want here.

I sympathise with your position as a carer but if you want to continue to work then you would have to have contingency plans in place for the time you were out of the house and she is alone. A call button for example which she could wear to summon help (available from most local councils for a monthly fee)which would get help there quicker than you could. Although I understood you to say in an earlier post that your partner works and is the highest earner, so is she home alone doing this job or out of the house during working hours and so has help accessible from co workers?

It really comes across as if you don't want to move sites and are looking for reasons why you shouldn't have to do so. That is your prerogative, but in the end you will have to either find a way of getting there and put in place contingency plans for your partner if you want to stay in post.

Under the circumstances you describe it seems that there are ways around the issues if you want find them, but it seems to an impartial observer that the will to do so isn't there, so you are putting the onus on your employer to resolve these issues.

As you say, the move is a small one in terms of actual distance, so they are not behaving unreasonably. No offence intended.

Lum

I wont deny that the current work location is quite nice, however I'm also not opposed to moving. Given my skin problems it would certainly be beneficial to be in a larger office that has air conditioning.

Up until this week I actually thought we would be moving to a different location, one that I was actually ok with despite it being further away. The problem for the company is that location was far enough away that they would have to offer a relocation package, and everybody asked for this package to include £6 per day in bridge tolls.

My partner's working situation is that she is office based most days, but on days when the ME is bad she works from home. She can also be home due to sickness or migraines and may or may not be working. When she's in the office it's not so bad as there are people around who can "help"*

I didn't know about the call button thing. As I said earlier in the thread we only got approved for DLA on Monday. I'm a complete n00b to all of this and advice about what to do is hard to find.

The call button wouldn't have helped a few weeks back though, when I had to leave work suddenly because I'd forgotten to load an important part of her wheelchair into her car that morning** and she didn't notice until she'd gotten to work.

*Said help seems to mostly consist of attempting to open doors she is perfectly capable of opening, without giving warning, and thus pulling her arm out of its socket

**Yay for methotrexate memory loss. The part in question normally doesn't leave the car but it had to be brought in the night before some reason.

poet123

The call button is primarily intended for the elderly, but I am sure would be available for anyone in need provided the fee was paid.

With regard to the situation re the wheelchair part, if that were to happen again and you were without transport your GF could drive to you, pick you up, and take you home to get the part, not ideal I know but a solution nonetheless.

There are always solutions, sometimes because they are not what we would normally have done we simply don't see them! My advice, for what its worth, would be to start to look for positives in the move, put in place contingency plans for your GF (call bell, key with friends/neighbours etc) and carry on with your job.

If you cannot do this with a location relatively near to home, you will need to think whether you can hold down a job at all, you are making yourself virtually unemployable.

Everyone has family responsibilities but they do have to put arrangements in place to make sure they can fulfil their working roles too. Clearly you have severe issues both personal and as a carer, but it is really not fair to expect an employer to consider all those needs (unless covered by the DDA or safety is involved) so you do have to make a decision about whether you can continue to do the job with the changes ahead. I hope you find a solution.

Details for where to find the alarm services;

Community Alarm
Radyr Place
Mynachdy
Cardiff CF14 3HP
(029) 2061 4852
www.cardiff.gov.uk
Manage the
Telecare and
Community Alarm
services (see
Carers Handbook
for more
information).

Lum

To be honest I'm pretty much unemployable in any other job simply because I can't leave the house until after 9. Even though that sort of thing is covered under "reasonable adjustments" in the real world no-one is going to touch me.

So as you can imagine I'm rather keen on keeping this job and finding a way to make it work. However I'm not as keen on keeping mine as I am on her keeping her job, which is why I took the half day to go and bring the wheelchair part. Her employers appear to be looking for excuses to get rid of her as it is, we can't afford to give them any.

poet123

Lum wrote: »

To be honest I'm pretty much unemployable in any other job simply because I can't leave the house until after 9. Even though that sort of thing is covered under "reasonable adjustments" in the real world no-one is going to touch me.

So as you can imagine I'm rather keen on keeping this job and finding a way to make it work. However I'm not as keen on keeping mine as I am on her keeping her job, which is why I took the half day to go and bring the wheelchair part. Her employers appear to be looking for excuses to get rid of her as it is, we can't afford to give them any.

She is covered by the DDA and a lot of others legislation, and so is in a much stronger position than you to preserve her job. Most employers would think long and hard before getting rid of a disabled person who had not given them any real cause to do so. Tribunals quite rightly favour the disabled who are discriminated against simply because of their disability.

I think you are going to have to bite the bullet and try to make it work. Good luck.

Lum

Oh don't worry, they're not sacking her for being disabled, they've just started holding her to higher standards than other employees, we've already had to defend, successfully, against one disciplinary that was demonstrably not her fault and which no-one else in the company has been disciplined for when they've done it, fault or non-fault.

I guess I should have worded my post a little better. It's more about giving them motivation to want to get rid of her.

And yes I'm going to have to try and make it work one way or another, that's why I came here for advice.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Lum wrote: »

Oh don't worry, they're not sacking her for being disabled, they've just started holding her to higher standards than other employees, we've already had to defend, successfully, against one disciplinary that was demonstrably not her fault and which no-one else in the company has been disciplined for when they've done it, fault or non-fault.

I guess I should have worded my post a little better. It's more about giving them motivation to want to get rid of her.

And yes I'm going to have to try and make it work one way or another, that's why I came here for advice.

Lum, one problem for ees & ers is that when the employers perception is that the employee requires a disproportionate amount of organisational time & resource they become cost ineffective.

The DDA allows such a view and there is a very fine line between reasonable & unreasonable employee expectation and the reality of employer provision. It is always the case that positive discrimination employment rules can be misused by employees demanding more and more from their employers while contributing less and less to pre-requisite organisational outcomes.

Your opening shot was to use """documentation or legislation I can use to hit them over the head with""" in order to unreasonably add thousands of additional pounds per annum to their unit costs base, while their reasonable requirement form you was no more than their other employees were asked to contribute, which in your case was an extra 7 minutes each way travelling time.

Reading what you have written here, it seems to me that you have a good employer who has 'bent over backwards' to accommodate your needs, some of which are not 'real' needs but simply life style preferences, that, in my opinion is a selfish misuse of the extremely preferential benefits of AT & DDA etc which only ever serves to alienate you from both your work colleges and management alike.

Sorry my friend, you should ask what compromise you and your good lady can make to your own lifestyle and how you manage your time to keep your employment. The fact of the matter is anyone not protected by the DDA would have been 'down the road' a long time ago, most of your previous and current needs I find are not needs but merely demands / wishes / preferences. Gains made I have no doubt with your use of """documentation or legislation I can use to hit them over the head with""".