- May 5, 2024
- Posted by: legaleseblogger
- Category: Related News
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# Legal Rights and Responsibilities in the Workplace
I recently started working at a warehouse in England and had a concerning experience during my last shift. The fire alarm went off, and everyone followed the proper procedures by evacuating to the meeting point. After it was determined to be a false alarm, we returned to work. However, my manager mentioned that if the fire alarm were to go off again, we were instructed to ignore it and continue working, which seemed unreasonable and unsafe to me.
As someone who is not well-versed in employment law, I was left wondering about the legality of such a directive. Can my employer actually force me and my co-workers to ignore a fire alarm or any similar emergency situation and continue working?
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****** just grabbed a
I worked in a warehouse a few years ago and the fire alarm was going off when we arrived in the morning. We all stood outside waiting to see if the building would go up in flames. The owner of the company arrived about half an hour later and found his entire warehouse staff standing outside doing nothing; he hit the roof. Started threatened to sack people on the spot if we didn’t get to work. I told him the fire alarm was going off and had been since we arrived and that no one had confirmed if there was a fire or not, his response was to tell me to shut up and get to work. He didn’t care at all about the risk or our safety and told everyone there that anyone who didn’t immediately begin work would be sacked. The owner tried to disable the alarm but couldn’t work out how to do it so we worked for 2 days with the alarm going off non stop before they managed to fix whatever the fault was. It went off periodically for another few weeks before another company came out and properly fixed the fault. We were all told we weren’t allowed to evacuate as it was a known fault and not a real fire. It’s very common for poorly run warehouses to ignore health and safety at every possible opportunity when it affects their bottom line, don’t trust your safety to someone who clearly doesn’t care about it. If it happens again call the fire brigade and the health and safety executive and report them, they won’t learn or change until forced and if they care so little about fire safety you can almost guarantee they are cutting corners in other areas which can and will put you at risk of serious injury or death. The company you work for have a legal duty to keep you safe and minimise risks at all times, choosing to ignore the risk of a fire is not something they can or should be doing, you have the power in this situation and the law is on your side so don’t let them bully you into accepting poor working practices. Report them.
No, they cannot force you to work through a fire alarm. If the alarm sysem has a fault that requires it to be disabled then it needs to be attended to by the fire alarm company within 4 hours, otherwise it does not count as “adequately maintained”. They are permitted to disable the fire alarm after carrying out an adequate risk assessment and putting in place extra measures, for example a dedicated fire watch. I’d suggest calling your local fire service and telling them what you overheard. They’ll likely give the boss a refresher in the law surrounding fire protection.
I have been a fire warden at two previous employments. We were the ones that swept through areas to make sure that no silly b*gg*r was staying in the building and reported to the incident manager that everyone was out.
When the alarm goes it means everyone out full stop. No exceptions. It wouldn’t have mattered if you were a senior director way above my pay grade – I’d tell you leave now. If you still refused then I’d report you as still in the building to the incident manager and let the emergency services drag you out.
Report to HSE, and step out of the loop. Maybe local fire service, too.
Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 is your friend here.
>A worker has the right not to be subjected to any detriment by any act, or any deliberate failure to act, by his or her employer done on the ground that—
>
>(a)**in circumstances of danger which the worker reasonably believed to be serious and imminent and which he or she could not reasonably have been expected to avert, he or she left (or proposed to leave) or (while the danger persisted) refused to return to his or her place of work or any dangerous part of his or her place of work**, or
>
>(b)in circumstances of danger which the worker reasonably believed to be serious and imminent, he or she took (or proposed to take) appropriate steps to protect himself or herself or other persons from the danger.]
If the fire alarm is going off, even if there was a previous false alarm, it would not be unreasonable to believe that there is a fire, and you would have a right to refuse to return to work until it was established that there was no fire and that the fire alarm had been reset. This act forbids your employer from “subjecting you to detriement”, meaning firing you, demoting you etc if you refuse to return to work in these circumstances.
Fuck no. Is he going to look after your family if it’s not an accidental alarm. Bollocks to him. Report what he said to HR and HSE, and start looking elsewhere. Anybody who values money/productivity above employee safety aren’t worth working for.
Just call the fire brigade. Anyone says a word just say “Grenfell mate”
Enough.
I was a civil servant and a fire warden at my department headquarters building. Fire alarm went off one day. I swept my area for stragglers and found a meeting ongoing. On informing the people present that the fire alarm meant everyone had to evacuate on person present informed me that he was a minister (very junior as it transpired) and the meeting would continue as it was clearly a drill. I informed him that as a fire warden it was my job to ensure proper evacuation in the event of an alarm situation. He still refused. I decided that my safety was more important than his stupidity and left the building and reported the situation at the report point. Turned out to be a fault, not a drill. Point to note, drills are not conducted when a minister has a meeting. I understand words were had. Bl**dy fool endangered everybody in meeting.
Until and unless you know it’s a drill or false alarm, no, your employer cannot ask or force you to not respond to a fire alarm. They can try to force you physically, which is kidnap, or they can threaten to discipline or dismiss you, which is just asking for a Tribunal claim.
Just a heads up of what it’s like to be in a building when there is an incident. I have been in a real fire, large building, the smoke from the ground floor engulfed the upper floors and, whilst making my way out, got totally intoxicated to the point of delirium. I have flashbacks after that point of being dragged out.
Point to note, you don’t just cough and splutter, smoke causes intoxication, you can lose consciousness and mental capacity. The fire may kill you but the smoke prevents you from leaving.
Put your wellbeing before a pay cheque, you might not get a second chance.
The fire, in this instance, was actually fairly small, but to me, highlighted the impact a large fire could do.
The only time you dont leave the building when the alarm sounds is if it sounds on a scheduled system test of which you would have been notified of beforehand.
Possibly sounds like miscommunication. Could’ve been having problems repairs to the system
I used to work in various financial institutions in London based offices. They often had fire alarms where everyone had to evacuate.
However, there were exceptions made only in the event where the fire alarm was a planned one. Some members of staff working on critical deadlines were asked to stay behind.
The only time you should ignore a fire alarm is if it’s a scheduled fire alarm test,
You’ll find that 99.9% of good companies do a scheduled test once a week at a certain time, anything outside of the test time is deemed to be an actual fine and to evacuate!!
There are such things as ‘stay put’ fire strategies but one is unlikely to be in place here. The correct answer is to just ask to see the fire strategy, although this boss sounds like the type to take exception to that, if he has even read it.
there is 2 different alarm sounds which should be explained on training.
you stay put during first one.