Scotland: Public Sector Attacks Double

The union piled pressure on bosses and the government after its annual Violence at Work survey showed the number of assaults on public-sector and local authority workers had surged from 20,000 in 2006 to 40,000 in 2016.

Unison health and safety committee chairman Scott Donohoe* said: “We cannot ignore a doubling of the figures over 10 years. It is also reasonable to make the correlation between the swingeing cuts to councils and increase in violence to council workers. Staff tell us if you have to wait longer, or the service you need is no longer available, or a support worker has less time to spent with a client, it’s being taken out on those working face-to-face with the public.”

The survey also found a significant rise of recorded violent incidents within local authorities rising from 13,206 to 17,605 this year, with authorities including Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Stirling reporting significant increases. Care workers experience twice the national average risk of assault while nurses are four times that, the union said.

School assistants are also said to be suffering from frequent assaults, mostly against women. It was also found that 83 per cent of workers within the voluntary sector surveyed said that their employer regarded violence as part of the job.

* Scott Donohoe is also a member of the UK National Work Stress Network's Steering Group.