Usdaw’s Freedom From Fear campaign seeks to prevent violence threats and abuse against shopworkers in the course of their duties. Every minute of every day another shopworker is assaulted, threatened or verbally abused.
The campaign brings together police, employers, politicians and shop staff to jointly work towards making the shops and shopping areas safer for staff and customers alike.
Each year Usdaw organises a Respect For Shopworkers Week. This year it is 7- 11 November, and shopworkers up and down the country are organising events to raise awareness with the public about what life is like on the frontline.
This year’s theme highlights the specific problems that can arise around Christmas, when shops are very busy and sometimes tempers can boil over as people get stressed when maybe queues are long or items are out of stock.
Usdaw is also highlighting the potential problems linked with projected reductions in police numbers, following unprecedented cuts in police funding.
As I have said before, the government is taking an irresponsible gamble with policing and public safety because they are cutting too far and too fast. Usdaw wants the government to reopen the review into police spending urgently. The speed and scale of the cuts are putting police forces in an impossible position and we fear that the current downward trend in crime will be reversed.
Twenty per cent cuts in central government funding to the police, with the steepest cuts in the first two years, has led to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary predicting that over 16,000 police officers are to be cut.
Since Usdaw’s Freedom From Fear campaign was launched in 2002 there have been significant breakthroughs in key areas to help prevent violence, threats and abuse against shopworkers, as set out below. Overall the campaign has succeeded in raising the profile of the issue and has forced employers, government, police and others to take action to tackle this problem.
Labour put an extra 10,000 police officers on the streets, leading to a one-third reduction in crime and a halving of violent incidents against retail workers since 2004.
Labour set up the National Retail Crime Strategy Group on which Usdaw is represented, giving the union a voice at the heart of government, helping to make policy that will improve our members’ lives.
Labour amended magistrates’ guidance following Usdaw campaigning, to state that where violence is used in the course of shop theft, it should be treated as aggravation of the offence and dealt with accordingly, possibly with a custodial sentence.
It defies logic to suggest that you can cut police numbers and continue see crime come down as it did under Labour. That is why I am so worried about the cuts to policing and the effects that will have on safety, not just of shopworkers but all employees who interact with the public during the course of their duties.
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John Hannett is general secretary of Usdaw