A damning report has uncovered the “toxic culture” inside the London Fire Brigade – with pornographic movies, helmets full of urine and racist bullying among the many abuse employees have endured.
The unbiased assessment concluded that the organisation is “institutionally misogynist and racist” with the cruelty ceaselessly euphemised as “banter”.
Sexism
Some examples embrace girls being groped throughout coaching workout routines and having to run a each day gauntlet of sexist abuse – with many routinely known as “woman” or “front bottom” by colleagues.
Other girls had been even punched and attacked, the report discovered.
It additionally referred to cases of males watching porn in fireplace stations.
“Any close inspection of some of the fire stations shows a watch culture, where men are sometimes huddled around a screen watching porn, which belongs in the last century,” it stated.
The assessment additionally revealed girls had their uniforms urinated on and males saved diaries of after they suspected girls had been on a interval and telling them they “didn’t want to be around women who were bleeding”.
Some males had explicitly stated they didn’t need girls on their watch and there have been a number of accounts of ladies being subjected to undesirable sexual consideration.
“This included men showing them pornographic videos and taking bets on who would get to sleep with them in the watch.
“One girl spoke of the misery of receiving video calls from a person exposing his penis and saying, ‘you need this do not you’,” the report said.
The review team were also informed that there have been 10 cases of staff being disciplined for sexual harassment over the last five years, with none of them being dismissed.
One female firefighter told the review team that the threshold for bullying is so high “you would need to gouge somebody’s eyes out to get sacked” and that “the whole lot else is seen as banter”.
She added that she tells her female friends not to let male firefighters into their homes to check smoke alarms because they go through women’s drawers looking for underwear and sex toys.
“Then they may spend hours bragging in regards to the dildo they discovered and they’re going to check with the ladies as sluts.
“We hear it all the time and I’m sick of it. You shouldn’t have to listen to this all the time in any workplace,” she stated.
Racism
Racist bullying was a key characteristic within the report, with the staff referring to incidents of individuals’s faith being mocked, whereas others had their helmets full of urine.
Black, Asian and minority ethnic employees largely really feel they must work twice as arduous to be heard and seen, the report discovered.
One black firefighter stated he had been topic to racist bullying on his watch, which culminated in somebody placing a mock noose over his locker.
The assessment staff additionally heard from a Muslim firefighter who had been routinely bullied on his watch due to his religion.
His colleagues spoke to him in an Indian accent and would typically ask him about his “magic carpet”, in addition to make racist remarks akin to “off to your rucksack training, it shouldn’t be hard, all you have to do is pull the cord” when he was despatched on coaching programs.
The report added that his colleagues requested how his Al Qaeda coaching had gone when he returned from the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
His work colleagues additionally put a chunk of bacon in his sandwich, and when he transferred to a different watch, he stated the abuse continued and colleagues put a pork sausage in his pocket whereas he was washing the dishes.
“After making several complaints that were dismissed, he began to suffer from depression and anxiety, and would later collapse at work and be admitted to hospital.
“He has since been identified with PTSD and has confessed to having suicidal ideas,” the report said.
The review said this example demonstrates the impact of casual cruelty that is continuing unchecked in some stations as managers consider racial abuse to be acceptable “banter”.
It said: “Those complaints are ceaselessly blocked by managers and never allowed to go wherever as a result of they do not deem such abuse to be racist means there may be little safety or justice mechanisms for these on the receiving finish of abuse.”
Source: information.sky.com”