We all love a Black Friday bargain, but please respect shopworkers.
I’m asking shoppers to keep their cool and respect shopworkers on ‘Black Friday’, as an unprecedented number of retailers are taking part in this year’s deal frenzy.
‘Black Friday’ comes from retailers traditionally operating at a financial loss, being ‘in the red’ from January through to November. ‘Black Friday’ indicates the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, or go ‘in the black’.
The Black Friday sales really took off last year in the United Kingdom and even more retailers are participating this year, which is great news for customers looking to snap up early Christmas bargains.
However, Black Friday can be very difficult for staff. With overcrowded shops and highly excited customers, sometimes tempers flare and things can get out of control. Retail staff are keen to give great customer service and are trained to provide a good shopping experience, but that can be difficult if people are angry and aggressive.
So my message to the shopping public is clear. Enjoy Black Friday, I hope you get what you are looking for and at a great price, but please keep your cool and respect shopworkers.
Black Friday is just one day during a very period in the run-up to Christmas, when shops are very busy, people can get stressed, queues are long and items are out of stock. Abuse is not a part of the job, yet our survey shows that well over half of retail staff experienced verbal abuse in the last year, with over 60,000 incidents of abuse against shopworkers every day across the UK.
Usdaw is campaigning for a Protection of Workers Bill to provide stiffer sentences for those who assault workers in the course of their duties. Too often retail employees are confronted with violence, threats and abuse and it is really important we stand together and ask people to respect shopworkers.
I have been very disappointed to see Tory and Lib Dem MPs, on four occasions in the current parliament, combine to vote down this important change in the law when proposed by Labour shadow ministers.
Making the assault of a worker serving the public an offence in its own right would simplify sentencing. Under existing guidelines, assaulting a worker is an aggravating factor, but there are concerns this is not being applied when decisions are made about prosecutions and sentencing.
I have been shocked by the leniency of some of the sentences for assault of workers. Every minute of every day another shopworker is assaulted and it is time to say enough is enough. The government must act to address this issue and act quickly.
Usdaw continues to campaign for a change in the law to ensure that proper punishments are given out. We must give a clear message that assaulting workers who are serving the public is totally unacceptable.
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John Hannett is the general secretary of Usdaw
The supermarket chains claim that one in six people in Britain now keeps Thanksgiving. Utter bilge, of course.
It is kept only by expatriate Americans and by the members of their households, a tiny proportion of the population.
The major Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Sikh festivals are all bigger, and they are all small minority interests.
But our commercial overlords obviously see both Thanksgiving and Black Friday as enormous opportunities, to be made part of the cultural mainstream by the old trick of pretending that they already are, so as to make everyone else feel abnormal and as if we were missing out.
I honestly do not think that half of these corporations even know that Thanksgiving and Black Friday do not, or at least did not, exist outside the United States.
They keep them without even thinking about it, and such is their power that, as a result, those days do now exist in more and more of the world.
Within 10 years, and possibly five, the media will refer to them as “traditional”, and the run-up to Thanksgiving will see it taught as such in primary schools.
But the world turns. Which Chinese festivals will we all be keeping another 10 years again after that?
Right now, I would make all four of St George’s Day, St Andrew’s Day, St David’s Day and St Patrick’s Day public holidays throughout the United Kingdom, rather than pointless celebrations of the mere fact that the banks are on holiday.
Three of those are in these Islands’ incomparable Spring and early Summer, while the fourth, being 30th November, would mark the last day before anything, absolutely anything, Christmas-related was allowed.