Lift broken at work

So (yet) another of those Brexit benefits <question mark>

Can you get a doctor's note saying you should not have to carry heavy loads up 4 flights of stairs because of health? Sounds like it could give you arthritis anyway.
Can your group not demand the company employs someone strong and fit to carry the loads upstairs for you? Would trollies help?
I know lifts can take a long time to repair from personal experience living in a flat - so don't wait and wait to react to this situation.

Is your boss also the owner of the business? Interested due to your comment ‘he’s not paying out of his own money but the company will pay’
Many people lack understanding when you run (own) a business - as every penny spent is yours, regardless of who pays for it!

I doubt it, although they might find themselves in breach of disability equality regulations.

just all down tools and refuse to do it=is there a union

OP can you get four people together at the same time and take things up and down in tandem? So the first person goes up one flight of stairs and passes off to the second person who does one flight of stairs and passes off to the next person....
That way each person is only doing one flight.

Don't be ridiculous. The OP's employer is being incredibly unreasonable. Whether or not walking would 'do OP good' is entirely irrelevant.

He may well be waiting for a part. We (NHS) regularly have to wait for a part to come. The lift in our elderly building (so wheelchair access and ambulance crew needing access etc) was waiting for a part for ages - we are talking months. The porters were going mad because they regularly have to deliver/take stuff from the wards etc etc.

@Mitara can you ask to see the order for the part? Or ask the other section manager to?

I can fully believe there are issues with parts. I work with a car garage and recently a land rover sat on their forecourt for 4 months because it took that long for the parts to arrive. Another colleague of mine took her car in for an MOT in October last year. It failed and needed a part replacing so it sat in their garage until Christmas.

Since Brexit getting anything in to the UK is a total PITA.

Can you get your boss to invest in a stair climber? https://www.sacktrucks.co.uk/stair-climber-trucks/

I'm not sure how they work in terms of it still being massively heavy, but you could perhaps move stuff a bit easier and less precariously?

No I know of some parts that take up to 4 months. Add the German or Italian summer closures of 4 weeks and now your upto 5 months. Getting parts through customs. Getting the correct engineers booked in once parts are in country could easily be 6 months.

Worked for a lift company for years - Lifts break down and in some lifts the parts are astronomical and can take weeks or even months to arrive depending on where they need to be sourced from, unfortunately sometimes it takes a long time to get lifts back up and running.. this is for your safety and the publics safety if they are using the lift.

Your boss will have got a quote before work goes ahead or parts were ordered.. so he will know the price before the work is carried out, so him complaining about the price may not have any bearing on the wait times. (And although not coming out his pocket, there are still budgets for this work and it has to come from somewhere)

It would be an issue for me. Though, fit and healthy, I need the use of a handrail going downstairs due to a visual condition and a balance problem (that I can't ride bikes)

YANBU

If it’s similar to a hotel then it’s unfair to make people try and do the same workload.

Those linens are heavy and it’s already a very manual role and so going up and down flights of stairs on top is going to be exhausting.

He needs to either fix the lift or hire temps to help.

You can get a huge load of linens in one lift but if he’s expecting you to carry smaller loads then it’s going to take at least 3x as long - and so that’s exactly what I would do.

Take 3x as long and if the work isn’t completed, then it’s not completed.

If you guys are burning yourselves out by working harder and he’s not having to fork out to repair the lift then he’s laughing.

You need to make it an issue that impacts him.

You need to make sure all incidents are registered in the accident book, which all workplaces with more than 10 employees must have. E.g. someone does their back in while carrying laundry, or someone knocks a heavy hoover into their knee while carrying it up the stairs. The accident book is usually kept near the first aid kit. Ask your first aiders for help with this.

This should then lead to a review on how to prevent further incidents, and a review of all the relevant risk assessments.

Potentially you could then report this to the HSE. https://www.hse.gov.uk/contact/tell-us-about-a-health-and-safety-issue.htm

This has been asked before but it's important - Are any of you in a union?

In fairness to the boss, lifts needing parts does always seem to be accompanied by extremely long delays from the maintenance companies. So he may very well be telling the truth about that.

OP you have my full sympathy - I don’t know if there’s any law or not but I’m trying to leave my current job due to a number of issues, one of them being similar to yours. I’m leaving work feeling physically exhausted.

If you all suspect it just isn’t getting fixed, I’d slow it down so that it hits them in their targets. That’s the only way employers understand.

I read this as “life broken at work” and was intrigued.

off to Specsavers 🚶‍♀️

Has he compared the cost of lift repairs with recruiting new staff when people resign?

However, he probably can't resolve the wait for parts issue.

I agree there should be an updated risk assessment though.

If this was me I don't think I'd mind too much because I enjoy exercise and stairs are fantastic for cardiovascular fitness.
But I would make sure I wasn't carrying things in a way that might cause injuries.