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Our health & safety looney's latest
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She's announced she's organising a two-hour training course on how to
pick up heavy objects.
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If it's being run by Precious McKenzie, like they are where I work, it's
well worth going to and a bit of a giggle. If it is, it's more about
protecting your back from injury even in normal everyday tasks rather
than just lifting boxes of paper at work.
If it's some dullard waffling on about health and safety legislation,
then casually mention that you found a large metal object outside with
fins on it and ask for the best way of lifting it into the skip.
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Two hours? To learn how to pick something up? But, best of all, in
case you've forgotten, she's added this:
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2 hours - we had a day of it.
Amused was not a word we used.
This is for a Company who were fined £100k +£30k costs last year for H+S
lapses, or more specifically, no H+S policy.
They have now gone H+S mad, and the workers are paying for the
management incompetence, with alomost unworkable safety policies.
Last month, a child got his finger stuck in a padlock dog on one of our
machines - we only use 1 padlock instead of using both of the locking
dogs, hence there is a finger size hole at waist height for the public
to stick things in.
We got a memo, go round all of your machines in the next 3 days, and put
insulation tape around all unused locking dogs top stop people putting
their finger in.
It didnt occur to them to order up 3000 new locks to cure the problem
for good.
This week, someone else has got a finger stuck.
The locks have been ordered and are to be fitted early next week. So it
looks like a H+S fine is coming again.
Alan.
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"If you have already attended any previous training then please
include yourself and use the session as a refresher."
(One of our lot has enquired if there's an 'advanced' course)
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A lot of this bollocks is nothing to do with training; it's in case anyone
should hurt themselves doing... anything. If a company's shown you how to do
the anything 'properly' and you didn't then you won't be able to sue them.
Or is that so obvious that it's not usually said? ;)
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Oh yes. But as it seems you've missed the idiocy of this particular
case, it's a course on lifting objects from "small boxes of paper" up
to 11kg. In other words, not heavy objects *at all*.
And as has been pointed out by others, there is a lovely Catch-22 in
that you don't know the weight of an object before you lift it, and if
you lift it onto a set of scales.....
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...where you have to bend down to see it, quite likely spraining a goitre or
something. No, the answer is to require your suppliers to deliver stuff
that is
a) clearly marked with the weight in such a way that it can be clearly read
from any angle without risk, both by conventionally-abled persons and by the
deaf, the blind, the illiterate, the thick, mongs, spastics and the like,
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All parcels should be fitted with a Clifford alarm style informing anyone
who passes within 1 metre of it, the contents, weight and size. It should
also tap it out in morse for the deaf.
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and
b) light enough to be safely picked up by untrained staff. You shouldn't
have to change the way you do business simply because your suppliers are too
lazy to provide you with a safely-useable product.
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It isn't only that. There's a duty on the employer to ensure that
anybody who may ever have to lift anything heavier than a pencil has
had training in how to lift it. This is covered in the H&S Policy
document which has to be prepared, maintained and updated by the
employer. The policy and therefore the training is mandated by the HSW
Act and Workplace Regs made thereunder.
It isn't fatuous in the respect that TOG is fulminating about, it is a
matter of complying with the law.
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Bad form post:
I asked "How heavy". Apparently: "From a small box of paper up to 11kg
maximum".
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How will you know if something's greater than 11kg without picking it
up to weigh it, which you can't do just in case it *is* greater than
11kg, meaning you're not trained to lift it? I think this needs
clarifying soonest.
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Get an angle grinder, cut the object into lots of small little pieces,
take one of the little pieces and weigh that, multiply that amount by
the number of little pieces you have and that should give you the
weight.
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What about the weights of the little pieces that were ground off?
Lots of small pieces means even more cuts, so the weight in the 'grounds'
may, or may not, be considerable.
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That weight is no longer important since you won't be having to lift
the parts of the object that have been turned to dust. It might be
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"Using a dust mask" would be the obvious next course.
It might be
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worth factoring in the likely weight of the epoxy that you'll need to
put the thing back together, but personally I'd do the re-assembly in
situ once the thing has been moved.
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And "Using hazardous chemicals" would come immediately aftrwards.
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Sacrificial work-experience bods rated to 11kg?
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In-office hoist with strain gauge. It's the only way to be sure...
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Two days? This method involves machinery, so it's at least a weeks worth.
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I'm weeping laughing. A two hour course on how to pick up small boxes
of paper.....
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I say give in and go along with it...
1) Bring in some bathroom scales. Weigh *everything* in the office, then
demand that anything weighing 11.001kg or above is labelled "Caution -
Lifting Hazard".
2) Refuse to handle anything over 11kg without recruiting assistance.
3) Requisition weightlifting belts, "for when you just *have* to move a 12kg
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I hope she doesn't read this or she'd got a job for life.
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weight".
4) Point out that the petrol can under your desk is ok, as it only weighs
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5) Change the 5l plastic can for a 20l metal jerrycan, then ask for help
moving it.
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about 5kg :-)
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But it's also UNDER a desk, so it constitues yet another variable. Bending,
reaching and lifting. There's enough there for a whole SLEW of courses.
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Not to mention confined space entry
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Under a desk is working in an "Over head environment" involving
"Penetration".
There's a PADI SCUBA course for that which involves a lamp and a length
of string.
Will that help?
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Now *that* would take some careful wording to avoid a reprimand from the
Political Correctness monitor.
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When I went on a "heavy lifting" course a few years ago, we weren't
actually allowed to lift anything vaguely heavy, so got to spenmd the
morning lifting empty cardboard boxes but *pretending* they were full
of reams of paper etc.
I nearly got a hernia from laughing.
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That has definitely made me giggle. I bet our course is the same.
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Suggest that as a hazard for the risk assessment that no doubt had to be
done...
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