Nearly two-thirds of retail and bar workers have faced verbal abuse at work, over a quarter have been threatened, and more than one in ten have been assaulted.
That’s according to a new survey from Mandate Trade Union.
The union’s assistant general secretary Jim Fuery said the union fields complaints about abuse and harassment from bar workers on the daily, and that the trend shows no signs of stopping.
“Any retailer or bar worker would tell you since the COVID period has passed, the aggression levels have increased dramatically,” he told Newstalk Breakfast.
“We’re very supportive of the initiative by Senator Mary Fitzpatrick, she has a retail workers bill to make it a specific offence to abuse or assault retail workers.
“That’s following on the back of a recommendation out of the new sale of alcohol bill in 2022, where [it would] make it a specific offence to abuse or mistreat bar workers.
“We believe it needs to be brought into the Justice Department, we believe that the Government needs to back this private member’s bill and bring it into legislation as soon as possible.”
Disagreement between a bar worker and a customer. Image: Wavebreak Media ltd. 10 April 2015Mr Fuery said that while other frontline workers would have a “valid claim in relation to that as well,” there is already legislation in place that deals with abuse directed towards them.
“I think what happened during COVID [is] that we realised that retail and bar workers are frontline workers,” he said.
“Well, not the bar workers at that period, they were all closed; but the retail workers, certainly.
“But we already have specific legislation in relation to frontline workers.
“An Garda Síochána would have legislation in relation to themselves.”
Similar laws
According to Mr Fuery, in other jurisdictions where similar laws have been introduced, such as Scotland, the number of prosecutions increased dramatically.
“Just to give people an idea, in Scotland, there was nearly 8,000 recorded assaults on retail workers in a four-year period,” he said.
“That Scottish Retail Consortium believe that that’s underreported.”
Main image: Bartender serving drunk customer drinking alone. Image: Cameron Prins / Alamy. 12 November 2021
