Trade union action improves shop workers’ safety

How safe are our shop workers?

It’s well known that many young people in Tower Hamlets go on to work in retail. Whether they are stacking supermarkets shelves or putting goods through the scanner, sending customers to the changing rooms or taking the money for their newspaper, young people in Tower Hamlets are starting their working lives in shops. And many Tower Hamlets parents will be thinking it’s good their offspring are safe at work… or are they?

Looking out for the health and safety of their members is shopworkers’ union Usdaw, which has been checking out what dangers retail staff have to face on the shop floor on a daily basis. The union’s research over  several years shows that many shopworkers are suffering violence, threats and abuse at work – and until the union began looking into what is going on, they have been suffering in silence.

Usdaw has been campaigning for a decade to encourage employers to improve safety for their workers. That work has paid off, with the number of reported violent incidents having decreased over the last ten years. The work suggests, though, that several incidents remain unreported each year.

Speaking at the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) Retail Crime and Loss Prevention Conference, Doug Russell, Usdaw Health and Safety Officer, said: “For the last six years, Usdaw has surveyed shopworkers to collect information on the extent of violence and abuse they experience and to gauge their attitude toward the problem. It involves a personal discussion on a one-to-one basis between a shopworker and an Usdaw rep and has shown that there is a considerable amount of under-reporting compared to the BRC survey, which reflects the incidents shopworkers report to their managers.”

John Hannett, Usdaw General Secretary, said: “There clearly is a lot of under-reporting of incidents and our message to shopworkers is that abuse is not a part of the job. We are encouraging our members to report all incidents of violence, threats and abuse to their managers and help get the issue tackled. … Our message to shopworkers is: We can sort it – if you report it.”

Usdaw’s full name is the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. It is the UK’s fourth biggest and fastest growing trade union with over 432,000 members. Usdaw’s Freedom From Fear Survey Report 2013 can be found at: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/FFFSurveyResults.

For further information about Usdaw, go to www.usdaw.org.uk.