‘Abuse is part of the job’: protect staff from public harassment, say unions | Global development

A multipack of vitamin pills hurtled through the air of the pharmacy chain, just missing Jane*, a pharmacist from the Midlands. But because of her role, Jane felt unable to just walk away from the angry individual who threw it after being caught shoplifting. “You’re trying to do what you can to get them what they need,” says the 26-year-old. “Because ultimately, that’s your job.”

What Jane had experienced was third-party workplace harassment; she was not being threatened or abused by a colleague or a boss, but by a customer she was obliged to come into contact with as a necessary part of her work. There is currently no law to require employers to protect their staff from clients, customers or service users who experience this kind of harassment.

A recent report from the TUC found that 58% of women had experienced harassment at work, rising to almost 62% of women aged 25 to 34 – a group over-represented in customer-facing roles – had experienced sexual harassment, bullying or verbal abuse at work. In 39% of these incidents, the perpetrator was a third party rather than another member of staff.

A survey by the Usdaw union last year found 90% of shopworkers had experienced verbal abuse, 64% had been threatened by a customer and 12% had been assaulted.

It follows a government survey on sexual harassment from 2020 that found 1.5 million people every year face sexual harassment from a third party at work. The scale of third-party harassment beyond sexual – for example, of a racist or homophobic nature – is not so clear.

Public-sector workers are also affected: an Nasuwt survey of 8,466 teachers found that one in four had been verbally abused by a parent or carer, and NHS staff have reported 20,000 incidents of sexual violence and misconduct from patients in the past five years.

Service industries employ 82% of the UK’s workforce and this is likely to rise. Some experts predict that as artificial intelligence increasingly takes on administrative tasks, there will be an increased demand for people to make up for its lack of humanity and more customer-facing roles will be created as a result. If so, worker protection from third-party harassment could become an even bigger issue in the UK.

For a brief period, there was legislation in place to tackle third-party harassment and it can be traced back to an unlikely source – the notorious comedian Bernard Manning.

In 1996, Sonia Rhule and Freda Burton, two black women employed by De Vere hotels as casual waiting staff, successfully sued the company for discrimination after working at an event at which the late comedian told racist jokes and guests subjected the women to racial and sexual harassment.

To seal this precedent into law, third-party harassment was folded into the Equality Act 2010. The act protects workers from harassment or discrimination on the basis of protected characteristics such as sexuality, sex, race, religion or disability. Employers had a legal duty to “take all reasonable steps” to ensure this sort of harassment did not happen in the workplace at the hands of other people they employed.

Section 40 of the act also required that employers prevent third-party harassment with a three-strike rule; employers were to take all reasonable steps to prevent third-party harassment at work where they were aware of it having occurred on at least two occasions.

Repeat harassment is a particular issue, the TUC has found, with 52% of respondents to the survey reporting that they had “experienced harassment, abuse or violence from a third party two or more times”, with this figure dropping to 30% of people who have been harassed more than three times.

Jane, who has now moved roles, experienced harassment on more than one occasion: “I’ve been told I’m stupid, and that I am trying to kill somebody because I’m not able to provide their medication that same day.”

However, David Cameron’s government repealed section 40 in 2013 after a public consultation that found: “Many employers or their representative bodies have told us that they find this piece of legislation confusing and unnecessary.”

In 2021, with a shift in public mood after the #MeToo movement, the government promised to “introduce explicit protections from third-party harassment”. This was followed in June last year by the worker protection bill, brought as a private member’s bill by Wera Hobhouse, a Liberal Democrat MP. Initially supported by the government, campaigners fear the bill is languishing as it awaits a committee-stage reading in the Lords.

As with amendments suggested in the Commons, the Lords’ amendments relate to concerns around free speech. “Would Waterstones, for example, risk an instore book signing by JK Rowling or Helen Joyce on the off-chance that one of the author’s fans might be wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘Woman Equals Adult Human Female’, knowing that an employee could sue for hurt feelings – real or vexatious?” said Lord Strathcarron in response to the bill. “These are real issues facing real businesses. I suggest we are wading into very dangerous waters.”

In response, Lady Scott, a Conservative minister, said that as long as an employer “can show it has taken all reasonable steps to prevent the harassment by having in place an effective anti-harassment policy” it would be safe from vexatious claims. The government Equality Hub has tabled amendments that allow for third parties to express opinions – that are not deemed grossly offensive – among themselves without the employer facing liability.

A group of unions and campaigners jointly signed an open letter last month calling for the government to not give up its support for the bill. Deeba Syed, senior legal officer at Rights of Women and a signatory of the letter, says the government must act on the promise it made in 2021.

“We are still waiting. There are currently no legal protections to hold employers accountable for third-party harassment, which has led to a prevailing attitude that tolerating abuse and harassment in a public-facing role is ‘part of the job’.

“We know from our legal advice line service that this gap in the law means employers can refuse to intervene or take any safeguarding measures if a perpetrator of harassment is not their employee.” She cites examples of harassment towards everyone from care workers involved in bathing and toileting patients to client-facing executives with no opportunity to complain for fear of losing business.

The government Equality Hub has not provided the Guardian with a timetable of the progress of the worker protection bill.

Syed adds: “We have been concerned to learn of reports that the government may seek to ‘water down’ or remove third-party protections altogether from the bill. This would leave an already gaping hole in protections for workers unaddressed.”

* Some names have been changed