Warning from the Union About Increasing Violence in Retail
Almost every second person has experienced insults, threats, or sexual harassment at work - in the past year alone, this affected 8.4 percent of respondents. "The main problem is the customers," explains the chairwoman of the GPA union, Barbara Teiber.
Incidents in retail are significantly increasing
"Our works council team has unfortunately had to observe in recent years that the tone of interaction with our female colleagues has become much, much harsher and the willingness to use violence is increasing," reported Billa works council member Sabine Grossensteiner on Monday at a press conference in Vienna. Insults (57.8 percent), intimidation (58.6 percent), and threats (37.6 percent) were particularly frequently mentioned in the non-representative survey. According to GPA, sexist incidents are also widespread: 40 percent of female employees report lewd or discriminatory jokes, one in five of verbal sexual harassment, and around four percent of physical assaults. More than half of the respondents (53.2 percent) see an increase in such incidents over the past five years.
In many branches, only women are employed, Grossensteiner recounted. "There are now actions where several men simply stand in small groups in a branch and then really provocatively observe the employees and colleagues, talk about them, sometimes in another language, also walk by and brush past their behinds - so really sexually harassing our colleagues." There are also robberies, with weapons increasingly being used, and caught thieves are behaving more aggressively.
Union appeals to employers
Employees are spat on by customers, and there are also fights between customers at the checkout, reported Teiber. She appealed to employers to take the issue seriously and stand by their employees and not "reward customers who really behave impossibly" and then complain to the company management with vouchers afterwards.
Structural measures are urgently needed, said the GPA chief. The union demands, among other things, a right to psychological support and supervision, violence protection officers in companies with 20 or more employees, and a mandatory minimum staffing level during high customer frequency. The spatial design of the branches must also be reviewed from the perspective of violence prevention. Narrow aisles or too small checkout areas put customers in stressful situations.
WKÖ considers union's proposals unfeasible
The representation of the employer side in the Austrian Economic Chamber (WKÖ) shows little understanding for the union's wishes to prevent violence: Another officer and a minimum staffing level in branches are "simply not feasible," stated the chairman of the WKÖ federal trade division, Rainer Trefelik, on Monday afternoon via a press release. The demands are "unrealistic." On the one hand, a study commissioned by the WKÖ from the Institute for Retailing, Sales, and Marketing at the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz confirms a "high satisfaction of retail employees with their job"; on the other hand, the retail sector also feels the shortage of skilled workers and sufficient staff is not always available.
(APA/Red)
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