Merry Christmas from H&M

I meant to update earlier about this situation but I had a list of work things to do and when I got to the next thing on the list, the news had me jumping for joy and I forgot to report back on this. To save you reading yesterday's story, I reported that staff in a Glasgow high street fashion store were having to wear hats gloves coats and scarves on the shop floor because the heating was working properly and "the doors kept opening"!

It was baltic and they looked ill. The manager told me they were not allowed to plug in heaters when I complained and that head office would back me up.

So this morning I phoned the head office of H&M in London.

I explained who I was and said I was concerned about constituents of mine having to work in conditions I considered to be intolerable. And their response? There won't be anyone in the building department till 4 January. Fine, I thought, I'll talk to someone else but apparently there was only this one woman on switchboard!

I asked if the staff there could expect any change to their situation before 4 January and was told no. She gave me an email address but nobody is going to see it till 4 January.

I'm thinking that I just wouldn't put up with that but of course, if you need the money (and who doesn't these days?) you don't have much of a choice do you?

So on Monday morning I will be reporting them to the Health and Safety Executive. New regulations brought in by the Labour Government I'm told don't give a minimum temperature that people are expected to work in, just that it has to be "reasonable". Well I don't think those workers are working in tolerable never mind reasonable conditions but we'll see what happens. Meantime they just need to suffer. Happy Christmas from H&M!