What constitutes an "unsafe work environment"?
My company is currently experiencing severe issues with power problems (caused at least partially by the local energy company). This has resulted in power surges, power losses, and "brown outs".
It has also caused us to lose air conditioning in much of our building.
My office is an interior office with no windows, and no air flow when the pumps for the heat/AC are out. We've remedied that in part with a box fan, but all it does is move hot air around
I did not have a way to measure temperature in here today, but I would estimate that it was over 100 degrees in my office---it was 92 outside, and it felt cooler to go outside than it was in our office.
I am 6 months pregnant, and have felt sick and light-headed all day.
Now we were just informed that the outage is probably for another 3 weeks.
One option given to us is that we can relocate to a cooler office with permission of a supervisor, but there are not enough open offices to accommodate everyone---and no one who works on a desktop PC (which I do, because of the sensitive nature of the information I handle) can move because there are no desktops left in open offices. So--only managers who have laptops are the people who can really move, and that's not really an option at all for me.
Does this constitute an unsafe work environment? Does extreme heat in an office environment--while required to adhere to a dress code--make for an unhealthy/unsafe environment, and should I be talking to a lawyer? I'd be more likely to suck it up if I were not pregnant and already suffering from the heat--but this has just had me sick and close to tears all day. My supervisor can offer no real solutions to the situation--she's dealing with a hot office too--and HER supervisor is the one who came up with the solution of moving if you could (but I can't).
What do I do next? I can't work in this environment for the next three weeks!