Usdaw calls for improved health and safety with more security guards in stores

Addressing conference delegates in Blackpool’s Winter Gardens, Paddy Lillis – Usdaw general secretary said: “When you leave home to go to work, knowing that you will come home safe and unharmed, knowing that your employer will fulfil their duty of care towards you, is the absolute minimum that anyone should be able to expect. It's a moral contract of the most fundamental kind. It goes to the heart of why we exist as a trade union, why we stand up for our members and why we will not rest until all our workplaces are safe.

“We have recently marked 50 years of the Health and Safety at Work Act and the first year of our dedicated health and safety campaign, highlighting the positive impact our Health and Safety Reps can have in workplaces. I'd like to thank all our health and safety reps who ran campaigns in their workplace and, more than that, I'd like to thank you for the work you do every day, to keep our members safe at work.

“We all know the horrific statistics on violence and abuse in retail workplaces. 77% were verbally abused last year, 43% were threatened and one in ten were physically assaulted. We hear those figures and we're appalled, but it's when we hear the stories behind those figures, the fear, intimidation and trauma that our members go through every day, it's only when we hear those stories that we can begin to understand the true impact.

“Where employers put security measures in place, it can make a difference and that's why we call on employers to provide security guards. Having a security guard can be a deterrent against theft, which is so often a trigger for violence and abuse, and it can help to make other staff working in a store feel safer.

“But, of course, it doesn't stop retail crime. Theft still happens, violence still happens and when it does, security guards are on the frontline. When criminal gangs sweep through our retail workplaces, it is the security guard who has to confront them. They are there to protect the store, to protect the workers in it, but who is going to protect them?

“In February this year, a security guard in his 60s was stabbed, in Central London. Just two days later, another man was stabbed in Preston, and he was believed to be a security guard too. In a supermarket in Stepney Green in November last year, a security guard was stabbed in broad daylight on a Tuesday morning. Thankfully, all of these people survived, but it could so easily have been a very different outcome.

“Labour has a clear mission, to halve knife crime. Police will be given new powers to tackle antisocial behaviour, the sale of ninja and samurai swords will be banned by this summer, an additional 13,000 police officers will be put on our streets during this parliament, 3,000 of them by next March, with guaranteed local patrols. under Labour, there will finally be a new stand-alone offence of assaulting a shopworker. This is a government that is serious about keeping our streets, our shops, and our shopworkers safe.

“The scale of the problem is huge. Security guards should never have to put their lives at risk. Equipping them with stab vests may, sadly, be a necessity. It is something that we fully support and we will call on employers to provide it as part of their PPE. This might not be completely limited to security guards, particularly in high-risk workplaces. Of course, this must be alongside other measures to prevent crime and catch criminals, security cameras, adequate staffing levels, panic buttons and clear reporting procedures, to make sure that offenders are dealt with properly.