"My boss forced me to go to the office and I got COVID" | The State

Under lockdown restrictions in the UK, anyone who can work from home must do so. They should only go to the job site if it cannot be done remotely.

For locations that remain open in England, employees are required to ‘conduct an appropriate COVID-19 risk assessment’ to develop a ‘specific’ strategy to contain the spread of the virus.

Those are the rules that, in theory, employers must adhere to with strict measures, such as minimize the number of unnecessary visits to the office, frequent cleaning of the workplace, and ensuring staff adhere to two-meter social distancing whenever possible.

As you will see with the four cases below, those rules are not always followed.

“Irresponsible”

Jane works in the administration of a private healthcare company in Oxfordshire – Northwest London – a job that requires you to work in the office, even during quarantine.

However, since you caught COVID-19 at work, Before Christmas, she has chosen to do her work from home because she feels more secure, something that is causing her problems with her boss.

“The office is so small that it is impossible to keep social distance“, He tells the BBC.

“My boss also didn’t follow the guidelines when I got sick and they didn’t tell anyone to isolate themselves. It was very irresponsible ”.

Jane maintains that her work, which she does with a computer and a telephone, can easily be done from home. He feels that he is thus following the government’s recommendations.

However, he points out that his boss wants him to return to the office and he cannot refuse to do so for long. “I have a mortgage to pay, I can’t risk losing my house.”

Fear of retaliation

Concerned that bosses are violating COVID safety rules, union leaders in the UK are calling for stricter enforcement of the rules.

Between January 6 and 14, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) – the authority on health and safety at work – received 3,934 complaints related to the coronavirus and took action to enforce compliance in 81 of the cases.

That action usually involved a verbal or written warning. And only one company faced tougher measures.

Surveillance can also present problems, as some employees fear retaliation if they make complaints.

George indicates that he works in the office of a construction company where the rules of social distancing “are ignored or distorted.” You are in a dilemma over whether to file a complaint.

He and ten other close colleagues could easily carry out their duties from home – and they did so during the first quarantine – but that’s no longer an option this time, though half of them are over 60 years old and two people is it so in the high risk category.

“I got a generic letter saying that we couldn’t work from home, even though we had all done it easily before for six months,” he told the BBC.

“There is only one way to report this internally, but doing so makes you a candidate for removal.”

He says the situation forces “to weigh between having a job during the pandemic or standing up for what you think is right.”

Only essential work

The HSE has made 33,000 visits to workplaces since March and assured the BBC that it is “increasing” inspections.

But the British trade union federation TUC wants the government to give the HSE more resources.

Some claim that nothing will change if the government does not modify the rules to ensure that only those who do essential work do so in person.

John (not his real name) is from Gloucester – a city in the west of England – and is part of a small team that installs electricity readers for the power company SSE.

He tells the BBC that he does not feel safe doing his job, which requires him to enter five or six occupied houses daily, for several hours at a time.

Although he recognizes that his work cannot be done from home, he thinks that energy supply companies should only be doing essential emergency work, as happened during the first quarantine, and not installing readers whose main objective is to improve the efficiency of energy consumption.

“We all know that the fastest way to spread the virus is contact,” he told the BBC, adding that staff like him should be on leave.

“They have given us masks and gloves, but employees of the public health system use superior quality personal protective equipment and they continue to die.”

A spokeswoman for SSE said the safety and well-being of the staff was its “primary focus” and that the company was open to discussing leave options with employees.

“We have created strict protocols for work from home including the opportunity for both engineers and clients to cancel appointments, or abort a job, if they feel uncomfortable,” said the spokeswoman.

Indifference

Steve, who has been working at a distribution warehouse in Stoke-on-Trent for the past three months, says disregard for coronavirus rules in the workplace shocked him.

He stated that social distancing was “non-existent”, with the people working “side by side”But that when he complained, the management did nothing.

“They were more interested in shipping the products,” he adds.

However, he felt that I had no choice but to work, even when she learned that someone in the winery cafeteria had fallen ill with COVID.

A government spokesperson assures that they have worked with unions, companies and medical experts to produce a “general safety guide against COVID”, so that companies that have permission to remain open can do so safely: “This it keeps updating as we develop our knowledge of the virus. ”