Alongside the emotional and physical impact on workers, retail crime bears a huge financial cost. The BRC survey also revealed that customer theft had doubled since last year to 16.7 million incidents, costing retailers £1.8 billion. In the face of surging levels of crime, retailers spent about £1.2 billion on crime prevention measures such as CCTV, increased security personnel, and body-worn cameras.
Paddy Lillis, General Secretary of Usdaw, says: “It is deeply disturbing that the level of incidents faced by retail workers is now higher than ever, according to the BRC annual crime survey. Violence and abuse are not an acceptable part of the job and too many shopworkers suffer all too often. This growing retail crime epidemic must be tackled and it is essential that the Government takes substantial action.
“The UK Government has repeatedly failed to act in the face of an epidemic of retail crime, rising theft from shops and assaults against retail workers. It is disappointing that they have no measures in their legislative programme to tackle this issue. We support Labour’s attempts to amend the Government’s Criminal Justice Bill, so that the law is strengthened to protect shopworkers from violence, threats and abuse.
“A protection of shopworkers law is also supported by the BRC and many other retailers. It already exists in Scotland and has secured over 500 convictions. We also welcome Labour’s commitments to 13,000 more neighbourhood police with guaranteed patrols in town centres, respect orders to ban repeat offenders and ending the £200 threshold for investigating and prosecuting shop theft. Labour is clearly offering the change our members need.”
Notes for editors:
Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) is one of the fastest growing unions in the TUC and the UK's fifth biggest trade union with around 360,000 members. Most Usdaw members work in the retail sector, but the union also has many members in transport, distribution, food manufacturing, chemical industry and other trades
www.usdaw.org.uk
BRC (British Retail Consortium) is the trade association for retail, representing over 5,000 businesses who deliver £180bn of retail sales and employs over one and half million employees
www.brc.org.uk
Usdaw’s Freedom from Fear Campaign seeks to prevent violence, threats and abuse against workers by engaging the public, shopworkers and the Government.
www.usdaw.org.uk/Campaigns/Freedom-From-Fear
Interim results of Usdaw’s 2023 survey, based on 3,082 responses, show that: 65.44% were verbally abused, 42.74% were threatened. 17.52% shopworkers had been assaulted during their career. 4.81% had been assaulted this year. Of those who were abused, threatened or assaulted, 59.71% said that shoplifting and armed robbery was the trigger. The final results of the survey will be published next month.
Criminal Justice Bill 2023: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3511
Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) (Scotland) Act 2021: www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2021/6
For Usdaw press releases visit: http://www.usdaw.org.uk/news and you can follow us on Twitter
@UsdawUnion