The SDA, the union for workers in retail, fast food and warehousing has launched a major national campaign ‘No One Deserves a Serve’ to stop the abuse and violence towards retail and fast food workers by customers this Christmas.

The massive campaign includes television, radio, digital and outdoor advertising and responds to SDA research involving 6,000 retail and fast food workers which found that over 85% of them had experienced abuse from customers at work.

SDA QLD Secretary Chris Gazenbeek said when the shops are extremely busy this time of year, there is no excuse for the increasing amount of physical and verbal abuse that customers are directing at retail and fast food staff.

“Imagine going to work every day knowing you will probably be abused. That’s the reality for thousands of Australian retail and fast food workers and it’s completely unacceptable, not just at Christmas but all year round.”

“Retail and fast food workers have told us they routinely have customers swearing and yelling at them, spitting in their faces or threatening them, simply for doing their jobs.”

“For retail and fast food workers this abuse can severely impact their physical and psychological health and it cannot continue. Everyone has the right to be able to do their job in a safe environment.”

Retail worker Lawrence said customer abuse was a common experience for him.

“I’ve had people say things like ‘I’ll meet you out the front’ threatening to fight me. One customer became angry at me and said, I do MMA (mixed martial arts), I could bash you up.”

“I’ve witnessed a colleague get pulled over the counter by an angry customer.”

“Customers get more and more angry as it gets closer to Christmas. Just a couple of weeks ago I had a customer become extremely irate at me, because we had sold out of the item he wanted. He was blaming me and yelling that it was my fault.”

Mr Gazenbeek said that while retail and fast food workers were trained to provide good customer service, this did not extend to tolerating verbal or physical abuse.

“The fact is, the customer is not always right. Abusing retail and fast food workers is wrong. No-one deserves a serve while they are just trying to do their job.”

“This Christmas we’re calling on customers to check their behaviour before they get to the checkout.”

“In addition to this major public awareness campaign to change public attitudes and behaviour, the SDA is looking to drive industry changes to ensure that customers can’t continue this behaviour and build better protections for retail and fast food workers.”

The SDA will be holding a national industry round-table in March 2018 to progress the issue and to develop practical workplace solutions to protect workers.