- Conference
- 2024 Water, Environment & Transport Conference
- Date
- 13 February 2024
- Decision
- Carried
Across the Yorkshire & Humberside region we are seeing an alarming increase in attacks on WET members who are simply going about their day-to-day jobs serving the public. These attacks can be both verbal and physical in nature, with extreme cases leading to our members being hospitalised and unable to continue to work in our sector due to the mental anguish this has caused them.
The?Health and Safety Executive?(HSE) defines violence at work as, “any incident in which an?employee?is abused, threatened or assaulted by a member of the public in the course of their employment”.
Sadly, we are seeing a direct correlation across our WET sectors of negative media reports of these attacks on our members. Yorkshire Water have seen an increase of 140% since prior to 2020. At the Environment Agency, our members have faced attacks for taking lawful Industrial Action. With draconian anti-union laws, it’s becoming difficult enough getting members to vote for action, without the unnecessary risk of attacks from members of the public they are serving. Our Transport members are not without their incidents too.
It is with great concern that we are seeing a large number of these incidents simply not being reported by our members because of low confidence in management that anything substantive will be done or worse still they now accept it as part of their daily role. This motion intends to stop this practise and protect our members.
Employers know they have clear legal obligations to prevent threats and violence towards our members at work. While they may make all the right noises, they are simply reacting to incidents rather than working on robust protective solutions which would give our members the peace of mind when facing these types of situations.
Conference, UNISON cares about the health, safety, and wellbeing of its members and rightfully we should. We must do more across our Sector to hold employers to account.
Therefore, this conference calls on the WET SGE to:
1)Reach out to all WET branches to determine if this picture is replicated nationally.
2. Explore the latest available personal safety monitoring technologies (i.e. bodycams etc) on the market, with the assistance of UNISON’s health and safety section if required and share the findings with branches.
3. Report the findings of the above asked to WET conference 2025.
4. Actively seek to invite a representative from the Health and Safety Executive, or appropriate person, to any upcoming WET Health & Safety seminars, or similar events where appropriate, to share the latest developments in this area and best practise to enable branches to collaborate with employers to prevent future incidents.
5. Share, ‘UNISON’s Violence at Work Charter standards’, with all branches and support its implementation.
6. Consider this topic for discussion at the next WET Seminar by asking similar questions below:
a)Do employers provide mandatory Conflict Management training for all staff within the WET group.
b)Whether employer’s focus of Conflict Management training is delivered by, Classroom based face to face or E- Learning module(s).
c)Inquire from Branches if they consider employers training delivery methods (i.e. E-Learning over Face to Face) is solely based on costs rather than quality.
d)Ask Branches to seek members views on the type of delivery of Conflict Management training they prefer.
e)And any other appropriate questions the Executive believe will facilitate a productive discussion.