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THE WEEK IN RETAIL ISSUE 22
IT’S THE SAME OLD STORY AS FINE WORDS FAIL TO TRANSLATE INTO ACTION
There’s a depressing familiarity to the news breaking today that the Government has concluded that it is “not persuaded” that shopworkers need protection after all. Despite six months of fine words and positive sentiment around the undeniably outstanding role that local retailers have played in keeping communities functioning under lockdown, those words have failed to translate into anything meaningful.
Despite major scale studies revealing the sharp spike in abuse of shopworkers during the pandemic – on top of the already unacceptable scale of shopworker abuse that has long been commonplace – and despite the fact that around 60,000 have signed a petition demanding better protection of retail staff, the Government has concluded that it is “not persuaded that a specific offence is needed” because it feels the range of offences that already exist “cover assaults against any worker, including shopworkers”.
The Government accepts instead that the general lack of faith in the way such crimes are dealt with by police is the issue “that requires more urgent action”. In other words, it’s kicking the issue further down the track again – and accepting something that the retail industry has been saying for decades.
We’ve known retail crimes have always been way, way down the list of priorities for the police. So much so that most retailers don’t even bother reporting crimes any longer. What’s the point?
So we’re back to square one. The heroic key worker role earned by the sector during lockdown that put retail staff theoretically on a par with NHS workers counts for nothing. We’re back to complaining about the same issues we’ve complained about for as long as any of us have been in retail. And does anybody really believe that meaningful change is coming?
Words are cheaper than they’ve ever been.
