Stop Police Cuts
Usdaw's Freedom From Fear
Campaign seeks to prevent violence, threats and abuse against
shopworkers. This year we organised a Respect for Shopworkers Week
to highlight these important issues and raise awareness amongst
shopworkers, customers, employers and politicians.
Our campaign highlighted the problems in the run-up to
Christmas. Lots of members have told us that incidents of verbal
abuse increase dramatically during the festive period. Customers
are stressed, stores are really busy and sometimes things can boil
over.
We are also focusing on the unprecedented Government cuts in
police force funding across the UK, which will result in the loss
of thousands of uniformed police officers on streets. We are
particularly worried about the effect this will have on our members
and levels of crime and anti-social behaviour in high streets and
shopping areas. There is no doubt that high visibility policing
works, under Labour there were 12,000 extra police officers on the
streets and crime went down by 43%. So we are asking you to
petition colleagues, friends and family and ask your local
politicians to stand up for policing in your area.
- Every minute of every working day another shopworker is
assaulted, threatened or abused
- Although the number of incidents has halved since 2003, it just
shows that there is much still to do
- Crime overall came down by 43% since Labour introduced an extra
12,000 police officers
- The Tories and Lib Dems are imposing cuts that will lead to the
loss of over 16,000 police officers
If you think cutting police officer numbers will increase crime,
please support our campaign by signing the petition.
For more information download: