This week is Respect for Shopworkers Week which, at the start of the very busy Christmas shopping period, aims to remind shoppers that retail staff are real people who do not deserve to be abused, threatened or assaulted.

Usdaw is the union that represents shopworkers and our retail crime annual survey shows that every minute of every day another shopworker is verbally abused, threatened or physically attacked. We are asking customers to keep their cool and show respect for shopworkers.

During this week Usdaw reps and members will be joined by Labour politicians campaigning for respect for shopworkers as part of the union’s Freedom from Fear Campaign, which has been running for the last 10 years.

Survey of violence, threats and abuse against shopworkers

The interim results of shopworkers experiences over the last year, from the first 1,844 responses, are:

• Victims of verbal abuse:     49 per cent
• Shopworkers threatened:   35 per cent
• Violent assaults:                      four per cent

Whilst this represents a slight decrease from last year, it still shows unacceptably high levels of attacks. 4 per cent of shopworkers assaulted represents around 120,000 violent attacks against retail staff across the UK.

Overall crime down, but shoplifting on the increase

Despite recent good news of the overall crime rate coming down, the latest crime survey statistics reveal that shoplifting increased slightly, showing that the government must not be complacent about the safety of retail staff.

Often, in the course of their duties, shopworkers are expected to enforce the law, whether that is preventing under-age purchases or detaining shoplifters until the police arrive. They can be put in real danger. So it is always a real concern to our members when incidents of shoplifting are on the increase, because too often that can result in the shopworker being assaulted by the thief.

Concern over lenient sentencing

Usdaw is campaigning for a change in the law to provide more severe punishments for those who assault workers serving the public. This would not just apply to shopworkers, but all public-facing workers, including NHS staff, transport workers, bar workers and many others. We are concerned by some of the lenient sentences given to criminals guilty of some pretty awful attacks:

• Like the thug, given a suspended sentence for assault, who goes out to celebrate his ‘lenient’ sentence and launches a vile racist attack on a woman shopworker, assaults her in front of her children by pulling out chunks of her hair and walks free from court again;

• or a man who grabbed a shopworker and pushed him back against a window. He then walked off shouting that he was going to ‘get him’. In court he was told his suspended sentence for a previous offence would not be activated,

• and in other cases, where the offender often isn’t charged at all and victims are left feeling that no one cares that they were assaulted. Like Val, who was punched on the jaw when she asked a persistent shoplifter to leave, because they’d been barred from the store. Val gave a statement and the police saw the CCTV footage. The attacker was arrested but nothing more has happened.

These cases do not suggest to me that the issue of violence against shopworkers is being taken seriously. Usdaw will continue to campaign for a change in the law to ensure that proper punishments are given out and to give a clear message that assaulting workers who are serving the public is totally unacceptable.

Change in the law

Recently the government blocked a Labour amendment to the antisocial behaviour, crime and policing bill, which would have introduced a specific offence of assaulting a worker serving the public. The amendment would have extended existing protections for police officers and Scottish emergency service workers to all workers serving the public, by making the assault of a worker serving the public an offence in its own right.

At the moment, under sentencing 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.

We were disappointed that this proposal was rejected by the government in the House of Commons, but we are hopeful that it will be backed by the House of Lords and the government will be forced to think again.

Report it and we can sort it

Finally, a message to all your readers who work in retail. Our surveying reveals that one in six shopworkers who have been physically assaulted did not report the incident to their employer or the police. We are shocked that so many are suffering in silence and I would urge you to report any incidents, to give us and your employer the chance to sort the problem.

Abuse and physical attacks are not part of a shopworker’s job!

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John Hannett is general secretary of Usdaw, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers

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Respect for Shopworkers Week 2013 takes place on 11 – 15 November. It is an annual event where shopworkers talk to the public about the problems of violence threats and abuse, asking customers to ‘keep their cool’. Part of the campaign will be encouraging shopworker not to take abuse as part of the job and report incidents to their manager.