Work expecting me in office when pregnant

[littlefawn]

I am currently 20 weeks pregnant and I requested to work from home a week before lockdown, they said it wasn't possible, I was then told it was "not recommended" that I come into work by a manager and told me to take sick (even though I'm not sick) I told them I could not get a sick line but that was fine.
About a month later I found out about 4 or 5 people had been allocated laptops and were working from home.
Manager rang about a week after this and said HR said they've done a risk assessment and I can come back to work. They said social distancing is in place, only one person per row of desks and people working one week on and one week off.

AIBU to expect a laptop to work from home when others who are not vulnerable have been allocated laptops?

Surely I still have to pass communal areas and touch door handles to get to my desk, there is a narrow corridor to my office and the building is shared by other departments (it's public sector)

From what I've read online employers must do what they can to help
Pregnant women work from home, my manager suggested I take leave as I have a lot but I've also sad they can't make you take leave and this is discrimination.

@AldiAisleOfCrap

Nothing they say makes sense. I work for the same surgery and they treat their staff abysmally, it takes up to a week to get a reply to her queries from the manager, she then sends cherry picked screen shots from the internet as an argument for not furloughing, she’s lied about speaking with HR for information, won’t give us our HR details to deal with direct. It’s exhausting. My DD is with a union but cannot get hold of them either. Just don’t know where to go with it.

@TheWickerWoman that’s an appalling way to treat staff, your poor dd. If they won’t furlough her she should be off work on full pay.
Has she written to her MP?

You mean they will prioritise managers as managers have more power to insist they are protected?
No of course not. I'm saying that if two have health issues that means it is better for them to work from home, they might prioritise a manager if their role is more vital. For instance, if one manager needs to be available to make difficult decisions, it will be more essential they are supported to do so than a member of staff who is not as essential because there are others available doing the same role.

@Hampsand They may not need to prove they caught it at work, just that the employer did not meet health and safety law. But we will wait and see.
Not obsessed, just aware that employers can't ignore health and safety law if they make staff wfh return to work.

And since most insurance does not cover this pandemic employers would be advised to settle cases anyway as fighting court cases is expensive. A green charter for any chancers.

@AldiAisleOfCrap no but that’s a great idea! I’m going to speak to her about doing that now, thank you. I was starting to feel so beaten down with it,

They are telling their patients who are in her situation to stay home, speak to employer etc yet when it’s their staff that need to do it they do their best to get out of paying them.

There is another lady we work with in exactly the same boat, she’s a high risk pregnancy, been advised to not work by her consultant and 12wk shield. Work won’t pay her either other than the ssp. It’s like they’re being punished for daring to take so long off.

Stop speculating about colleagues, or trying to make this about them.

Focus on yourself, only.

Make your case that you can work from home.

I don't want to sound cold here, but I think you may have misunderstood the guidance around third trimester as well. The RCOG guidance refers to public facing roles and states that frontline employees should be moved from public facing work from 28 weeks and should work from home where possible (key phrase again is 'where possible') so that they can socially distance properly. If they can't work from home they're supposed to at minimum be taken off patient facing duties.

If you're not in a public facing role then there's essentially no difference to the guidance for pre or post 28 weeks, it certainly doesn't say that all pregnant women over 28 weeks should shield, so I don't think they're going to just immediately let you stay at home when you reach that point either.

If your employer has put measures in place to ensure social distancing is possible in the workplace and they have said it's not possible to work from home then based on govt guidance, you are still expected to attend work unfortunately.

I understand that your point is that you could, theoretically, carry out your role from home if they provided equipment, but sadly your employer either disagrees that you could do so, or cannot provide the necessary equipment. There's no precedent for this situation so it's hard to say for certain whether the inability to provide a laptop would be actionable in the same way that it would be under disability discrimination rules etc.

It'll be interesting to see the cases and rulings which come out of all this, but that doesn't help with your immediate circumstances.

But spending £500 per employee for each laptop is an unreasonable cost to expect them to absorb on top of salaries etc

I wasn't suggesting they buy a laptop for every employee, just the OP, who is pregnant.

I was a manager in local government for several years. We had delegated budgets, and I would have been able to find £500 for this without any problem. My budget was only £500k, and I had to run 4 local offices out of that. You only need someone to leave and have a month before the new person joins and you've practically saved that.

@TheWickerWoman

There are plans in place to roll out more laptops to gp surgery staff. The first phase was for clinical staff to allow them to work remotely. But they NHS are now assessing the numbers of wider staff that are vulnerable and should work from home. Make sure the practice is doing risk assessments of all staff and sharing the outcome with the GpIt teams and commissioners.

The thing that jumps out to me is that the laptops/wfh capability has been allocated according to productivity. In the public sector in particular (but not exclusively) I've come across more resistance to wfh because of engrained feelings that people won't be productive wfh. Could you dig into why the manager feels that you won't be productive if you wfh? And provide evidence to the contrary or reassurance or address the issue in some way? Because it's a big attitude shift more than an IT issue in many places and it sounds like they've 'trusted' some people to do it but for some reason don't include you in that number. Is your role something where they can monitor the output and realise that any concerns are unfounded?

*My argument is

They had laptops available

How do they dish them out?*

That is an entirely legitimate question to ask imo: what were the criteria used in determining which staff would be issued with laptops to enable them to work from home?

And I think I might be minded to ask HR to clarify the policy, as that way they will pick up that you are unhappy about it and (as has happened in more than one public/3rd sector place that I've worked) you might just find that a laptop suddenly becomes available.

The public sector has to be squeaky clean when it comes to equalities. Their criteria should be along the lines of 1) staff shielding, 2) staff in vulnerable groups etc. They might include "or who is in a household containing a shielding/vulnerable person". They might prioritise those who have a long public transport commute, to minimise the risk of getting infected by fellow commuters.

If they can't produce a document showing how they decided, the manager is leaving themselves wide open to suggestions of favouritism or simple bloody uselessness. If it turns out that the people who are WFH are all male, or all support the same footie team, or something like that it will look very fishy indeed. I've known managers get sent on equalities/diversity training courses for less!

And there's the slightly unethical alternative which was widely used at one LA I've worked in: to go off sick with stress/anxiety. Tbh, I can entirely understand something like this making someone sick with stress.

And I second everyone who's said join the union. You might even be able to join online. I work in a non-unionised workplace now, so had to join as an individual member and I did it online.

I wasn't suggesting they buy a laptop for every employee, just the OP, who is pregnant.

It may be that there are other people who would see that the OP has been bought a laptop and would then question why her second trimester pregnancy is more important as a risk than their high blood pressure.

Have you seen the risk assessment HR have written? It should specifically reference you being pregnant, and not just the generic one about being back in the office; you should have sight and agree to it. There is often a theme with managers that they either put their staff first, or themselves because they can. The latter might not be the case here, but especially as you edge toward 28 weeks onwards you should be prioritised for working from home!

To be honest I didn't have a risk assessment carried out with my pregnancy (not that I signed anyway). I didn't say anything as there were very little issues during that pregnancy. Although towards the end I did request a specific chair for my back and they wouldn't even give me that

YABU. They have made provisions for you.

Your argument cannot simply be “others have got laptops and can wfh why can’t I?” What others do is none of your business and it’s not relevant to your situation.

Everyone is assessed on an individual basis. What Jenny the manager or Bob the IT guy are allowed to do is not your concern.

You're not vulnerable though.

@roarfeckingroar
Pregnant women are actually..

Current guideline from RCOG is that pregnant women should pay particular attention to social distancing until 28 weeks when they enter shielding, this is also alongside guidelines specifically for pregnant staff who are working in public facing roles, it is that pregnant women should be given a choice to or not to work in a public facing role and this should be supported by their manager.

You're not in a public facing role so as per normal social distancing you should be working from home if possible, which your company is saying isn't.

@Millettmum
That information has been superceded with additional guidance.
So no op isn't.

@SoloMummy
I have just literally got it off the government website, it is still very much applicable.

Do employers have to give a reason why it isn't feasible for someone to work from home?

Also no staff have been furloughed so it seems too much of a coincidence that all the staff given laptops are managers. The offices are still open so logically there's no reason why one person should be allowed to work from home compared to another, which is why I thought health would take precedence.

Misses point, but I’d love to know what sort of Public Sector job is completely computer based with no customer interaction or phone calls confused.

Oddly, we all have mobile phones and Skype. Bit hard to collect the bins from home I guess, but talking to people is a breeze.

I know a lot of people have commented on the fact that employers (public sector or not really) should be able to afford to just pop out and buy laptops. That really isn't as easy as people think. For a start off, many public sector organisations (and others too) are tied into purchasing agreements that prevent them just popping down to Curry's to pick up 2,000 laptops. But those then need licenses buying for every single one of them and all the software that they need - and business software licences are expensive. Then you need the remote access capability - more software and possibly hardware depending on your system. Then you need the servers that have the capability to manage all that access. I mentioned previously that my public sector employer was already capable of "technically" sending everyone home before any of this, as we all have remote access capable laptops. But they still had to buy in an additional 4,000 licences for essential software and then spend £000's on upgrading their central systems the first weekend and then even more the next week to lay down more bandwidth to cope with the traffic.

Making a large organisation "working from home" capable in weeks is not cheap, nor easy. And the lockdown won't be for ever, and the OP won't be in work for ever either, as they are going off on maternity leave soon!

Have the staff that were given laptops got childcare issues ?

3 I know do not have childcare issues the others I'm not sure