NIRC: Violence against retail workers

NIRC and Usdaw met with NI Justice Minister, Naomi Long MLA on Wednesday 23 October to discuss how best to protect retail workers from assault.

The meeting follows a joint campaign by NIRC and Usdaw who were concerned that retail staff in Northern Ireland would not be as well protected under the law as their counterparts in GB. The Protection of Workers Act, which came into force in Scotland in August 2021 and the Westminster government has promised to legislate to make assault retail workers a specific stand-alone offence in England and Wales.

Following an exchange of correspondence between NIRC/Usdaw and the Minister, Ms Long has agreed to go further than her initial suggestion, which would simply have allowed the introduction of a statutory aggravating factor at the point of sentencing. Ms Long considered our suggestion of a stand-alone offence and is now intending to introduce further protection for those workers who are public facing.

Paddy Lillis, the General Secretary of Usdaw and Neil Johnston, Director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium had a very useful conversation with the Minister and her officials. Part of the conversation revolved how it might be possible, through improved categorisation and recording, to establish the status of the worker involved in any incidence of violence, i.e. if under future legislation there is an offence of assaulting a public facing worker then we could be able to discern which were against retail workers as opposed to other categories of workers e.g. ambulance staff, public sector workers, civil servants, etc.