Sat on the sofa at home in agony with my knee but feeling guilty I don’t do sick days but works been tough the last few months and my knee has given up.

I had a bad knee injury years ago, really bad 12 weeks off work, lots of scans and physiotherapy, still do the exercises and I cycle to keep fit and have fun.

So work, we have a lift to unload wagons, nice smooth run getting heavy cages on/off the wagon. 8 weeks ago ours broke, so having to use the tail lift and drag the cages across the yard, day 1 the pain came back so used my knee support, mentioned to personnel manager I really shouldn’t be doing this due to past injury, was told don’t worry we have plenty of staff send one of those out. Well last week I had 2 on holiday, I had to suspend another, and 1 moved to nights hence no staff, was that bad I had to use one of the cleaners to help get the cages off the tail lift (2 person job).

Got up Saturday knee in agony and had to call an emergency doctor he said I had dislocated and it hadn’t set back properly, hence x-rays and some pretty rough handling at the hospital yesterday, got up this morning all round the knee is pretty badly bruised and all the muscles have tensed up it bloody hurts. Called in sick, got a pretty rough ride over the phone as we are already short.

Feel pretty guilty, ive had a bad year, sinus issues some other stuff, and now this, I rarely call in sick but I know I will struggle to get to work let alone do anything physical, my other half told me I should of done it a week ago, but I hate letting people down.

We have a biking holiday in September she was worried I won’t make it if I don’t sort my knee out now.

Feel pretty guilty, ive had a bad year, sinus issues some other stuff, and know this, I rarely call in sick but I know I will struggle to get to work let alone do anything physical, my other half told me I should of done it a week ago, but I hate letting people down.

Well as they havn’t fixed the kit that your meant to use to do the job in 8 weeks I’d not feel that bad.

You’re not fit to work because you’re pretty badly injured (it’s bloomin’ dislocated, it’s not like it’s slightly sore!) they didn’t fix the equipment required to do your job. What is there to feel guilty about?

That would be an OSHA record-able injury at our place.

I just feel crap not being there, I know its a job, I get attached to what I do, looking after my team etc…

The lift was decommissioned, has taken them all this time to get the payment authorised, we have had some pretty bad accidents over the last few weeks, 2 staff have got broken toes due to running over there feet, i’ve had a cage tip and fall on me, never seen so many bruises that week, another manager had the contents of one cage slide out and take him out, and he is a big lad. We have had head office health and safety out but it won’t be replaced until September.

Pride in your work is a great quality. However, you are broken and you need to recover. I am sure your boss will understand that you cannot do the extra physcial work being asked of you. You can rightly say you gave it a go but the new arrangements have made it worse, kit needs to be fixed and do you.

Good luck and healing vibes.

The lift was decommissioned, has taken them all this time to get the payment authorised, we have had some pretty bad accidents over the last few weeks, 2 staff have got broken toes due to running over there feet, i’ve had a cage tip and fall on me, never seen so many bruises that week, another manager had the contents of one cage slide out and take him out, and he is a big lad. We have had head office health and safety out but it won’t be replaced until September.

You need to raise this higher up the HR, and/or the H&S Executive. Amazing how quickly it’ll be fixed if someone says you can’t do it the manual way.

Or go in and spend your day looking at a safer manual way.

In the nicest possible way, you’re not looking after your team if thee have been broken bones and bruises. You demonstrably don’t have a safe system of work and you shouldn’t be doing it in those conditions.

Don’t feel guilty, lots of H&S alarm bells going off in my head reading your posts.
All sorts of things they could have done like bring in short-term contract staff to ease the load, especially as they have a timeframe for the lift to be fixed and know about the holidays and lad shifting to nights.
Your knee was a known quantity as well and you raised it with them that it was sore/you were struggling.
Them having a pop down the phone when you call in is very poor form

Agree with MrHoppy. If it isn’t safe don’t do it until a safe temporary way of working can be established. HSE would have a field day if unsafe working had been reported and continued before a serious accident.

Seriously?
Wow. They shut one production line down for a couple of hours when we had a guy dislocate his elbow fitting a dashboard assembly. The whole station was torn down, inspected, serviced/repaired and then reapproved by the health and safety team.

AFAIK the elbow guy was off/light duties for 6 or 8 weeks.

Don’t like to think how much the whole thing cost the company.

(It was an injury he’d picked up at home, nothing to do with work. That just finished it off.)

If you’re not already in a union, it might be worth joining one now. That sounds to me like a situation that could rapidly get worse, and if the company start to sling mud to try and mitigate their failings you may need legal support. Also, if you end up losing your job because of time off due to an injury in work, again you’ll need assistance to get proper compensation.

Start making detailed notes of everything that’s been happening in the last eight weeks while you’re laid up a home if I were you.

We have changed a fair bit after the first one, back to basics as it were. The issues lie with the yard it wasn’t designed to drag heavy cages over its all rutted and generally a mess, the other is the cages from depot, some times you get cages with perfect wheels and they roll sort of, but a lot of the time you get cages with square wheels where they have been dragged across the warehouse, 9 times out of 10 you don’t know until you drag it off the tail lift and the thing just stops.

I have personally sent back over 100 cages in the last month all labelled broke, who knows how many go back into circulation.

Have already kept a record of all the actions I’ve taken and reference numbers of head office calls and times/dates I’ve had conversations with my boss stating how unacceptable the situation is.

All of the above is good advice.
The business clearly don’t have a safe system of work.
The business have injured at least 3 (you included) people due to not repairing equipment that you are aware makes the job safe
You have raised the issue with your manager (did you raise the safety issue? If not, do so now)
The business is looking at 3 potential claims against them. Broken toe = £3k ish.
Any time off now is fine – just take it. Do list out what has happened (as close as possible, list form, chronological order – try to keep emotion out of it as best you can) then send it to your line manager – email is good as you can get a sent date and a read receipt.

Oh, apart from the Union thing. If you haven’t got a normal union at work, simply joining now is likely to be as much use as a chocolate fire guard.

Feeling guilty? I’d be feeling bloody angry personally.

Number of H&S@W breaches there – even a cut finger is a recordable incident at our place. May be worth visiting your doctor and for him to write to your employer to inform them that due to a work-related injury, you need to be on “restricted duties” to allow you to recover – if they ignore this they are committing an offence. It’s your health, not theirs!

You’re being ridiculous. I’ve seen too many completely broken 60 year old men during my previous life as a courier / warehouse worker. All the macho BS, all the manning up, all the stupid loyalty to a company that are crap enough to give you a hard time when their systems fail and finally break your body.

Stuff that.

Don’t feel guilty they clearly have little regard for their employees. They are also note exercising a sufficient duty of care for you all.
F*ck em! Take as much time off as you need to get well, don’t let work ruin your long term health and well-being.

Also put everything in writing to your supervisor/boss. Take copies and make a record.
If an accident happens on your watch the company will blame you, that’s why it needs to be put in letters.

To be perfectly honest with you I wouldn’t go about posting details of injuries suffered at work due to missing or malfunctioning equipment on the internet.

If you employer is not providing you with either suitable training, equipment or an environment in which to undertake the prescribed task and are still expecting you to complete the tasks and by the looks of it resulting in numerous injuries, they are in breach of the regulations directly associated with the 1974 HASWA act and could face prosecution under those.

You are well within your rights to have time off due to injury sustained at work, self certification initially and if the resulting time off becomes in excess of 7 days, the incident is reportable to the HSE as a RIDDOR / lost time injury for which there will be an investigation held by impartial parties.

The more I read this the angrier it makes me. Your employer should not be requiring g you or your staff to work in an unsafe manner, even if they thought this new approach was safe they now know it isn’t. There is no way you should be getting pressure to return to work and if anything they should be begging you not to kick up a fuss.

The last place I worked had an arm doing oil infrastructure installations in remote and difficult locations and they were running over 1M man hours without a lost time incident. Just because something is ‘dangerous’ it doesn’t have to be risky, it’s when you should be doing more to keep safe.

Sounds like you need to get your manager to rent a powered cage tug, for everyones sake
Linky

I suppose the crux of this is,

Did they company force you to do this stuff manually, or did you take it upon yourself to MTFU and soldier on and all that?

If the former then you should be seeking sizeable compensation; if the latter then you’re an idiot and have put yourself and others at risk. I doubt the cleaner had H&S training for lifting heavy objects, I shudder to think where you’d be right now if they’d put their back out or something.

Not to be an arse, but it’s perhaps worth considering how easy it would be for the company to go “well, we told him not to but he did it anyway” and turn any legal disputes back on you. Something needs to change though, before someone gets hurt in a way that’s not going to get better any time soon.

It’s the back up process and the cleaner works with us not contracted out and has the same training all of the team have, including deliveries. Would never ask someone to help who hasn’t got the basic training, that’s a big no no!

Fair enough. The point I was trying to make (badly) was, cover your back.

I know and thanks all.

LMT. For once I speak sternly! Don’t be a big div!

There failure. Their failure to fix. Their failure to heed your advice. The entire situation their fault.

Now, rest and do your best to heal for that holiday!

Get onto that personnel manager and tell them “told you so”.

While you are off work you could phone one of the “no win no fee” companies that are cluttering up the ad breaks and they will discuss your options.

Even if you did soldier on through choice, you’d have them over a barrel!

Very simply – find another job.

That sort of injury is going to make your later years miserable and crippled. You don’t want to be housebound by the time you retire. You can never buy back your health, and even if it was possible, I doubt they could pay you enough to do so.

Maybe it’s time to talk to a Personal Injuries lawyer. They are very effective – why else do you think the insurance industry spends so much money on negative PR for them?

I’m fed up being sofa bound today as it is! dread to think about it getting worse in my later years! only so much internet surfing you can do.

Rule 34 dude.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/concerns.htm

http://webcommunities.hse.gov.uk/connect.ti/concernsform/answerQuestionnaire?qid=594147

http://www.hse.gov.uk/riddor/index.htm

If your job is hammering in nails and the hammer is broken then I as a boss would not expect you to MTFU and deal with it. It is acceptable with some caveats that you may have to deal with the situation temporarily but in this case 2-3 days not 8 weeks. I am responsible for managed services within buildings and we have 4 different types of lifts and hoists. Business critical equipment failure has had a knock on effect here with injuries and workplace accidents increased. Company is at fault.

Two staff with broken toes, is that down to failing to ensure they wore the safety footwear supplied by the company, or the employer failing to identify the need for safety footwear?

More to do with not having a safe system of work rather than a PPE issue. If they’ve not risk assessed the task and implemented a SSOW then thy’ve failed in their duty under the management regs. Worse they’ve had incidents and not implemented corrective/preventative actions. Sounds like your H&S guy wnats a rocket up his arse (ditto the management team).

spooky_b329 – Member
Two staff with broken toes, is that down to failing to ensure they wore the safety footwear supplied by the company, or the employer failing to identify the need for safety footwear?

Actualy the company is at fault either way – for failing to make the employees wear ppe or for failing to provide it.

What the former may do is to mitigate any award to the injured employee