Hi Stagger, in my exp in the engineering industry ppe is provided by the company, you should have the knowledge , training and experience to use it, if you don't use it and come to harm you may be liable to be disciplined, if you use it and come to harm because it was not up to the job, you may be able to seek compensationOriginally Posted by Stagger
Hi Steph
The larger companies will provide but not the smaller ones.
A lot wouldn't even provide overalls now. A welder usually has his own screen, gloves and overalls.
Safety glasses, visors and ear protection are always provided.
Claiming against your company is not usually a smart move either.
I'd be incredibly surprised if any "fully employed" person in an engineering company was asked to provide their own PPE.... perhaps going in as self-employed or as a "contract" employee then yes...
I'm generally office-based now but have worked in various engineering roles for 20 years (oil&gas/M&E/site based/office based/QS/project management/site maintenance engineer), and i've never had to provide my own PPE (unless i've done so out of choice).
If you're a full employee of a company and they can't even be bothered to provide you the correct PPE then i'd suggest they might not necessarily be the be the greatest company to work for.
I've been lucky then as the companies I have worked for or been involved with all provided ppe
Now where is the popcorn?To resolve the argument between Oracle and MikeT, I propose:
How to respond to COVID19 without damaging the economy or upsetting the medics
Persons of a sensitive disposition should not read further.
1. Let all activity carry on as normal; no disruption to economic activity, education, sport, etc.
2. Anyone displaying COVID19 symptoms is banned from hospitals. So the NHS can carry on all its normal work without disruption or the need for extra PPE.
3. The only extra demand on public expenditure is to employ the people touring the streets with trucks, shouting "Bring out your dead", and digging mass graves.
4. Since most deaths are among the elderly, pension fund managers are happy: there is little, if any, downturn in their investments, while the number of pensioners they are paying out to reduces substantially.
5. Richard Dawkins writes a bestseller explaining the role of pandemics in evolution by natural selection (assuming Richard Dawkins survives the pandemic; he's quite old).
6. The Tory government gets voted out at the next General Election, because many habitual Tory voters were rather fond of their elderly relatives who died.
HSE leaflet INDG174 makes it clear that not only is the employer responsible for providing PPE, but also that an employer cannot charge an employee for providing it.
Admittedly we are in medical diagnostics not engineering, but all PPE has always been the responsibility of the company to provide. All staff are trained on its use (and safe lab practice) at induction and may be subject to disciplinary action if they don't use it correctly.
It applies to all workplaces, and there are a variety of additional requirements for more specialist areas. I am aware of the difficulties of procuring ppe in the quantities required and that the procurement teams will be trying their best, just felt a few posts were maybe implying the medical and care staff all know what they signed up for and to get on with it, a bit harsh, in this day and age no-one should be harmed by their work, and my general dissatisfaction with the unfair modern world we live in.
Everyone seems to be assuming that the NHS staff who have died from the virus were infected in the workplace. No doubt some of them will have picked it up elsewhere and may have even passed it on to colleagues.
Of course the BBC and press in general are not interested in investigating such matters.
Visibility good except in Hill Fog
Might be a strange question,
But why didn't our country send all virus cases to nightingale hospitals and leave regular NHS services free from the virus?
