CURRENT AFFAIRS
GMB launches SafeGuard Campaign and Charter for Security Officers
Posted by Callum Waddell on 05/03/10The GMB’s SafeGuard Campaign aims to raise awareness about the rising levels of violence and abuse suffered by frontline personnel, and demands a commitment from employers to address what is a parlous situation.
Supported by Paul Kenny (the GMB Trade Union’s general secretary) and Jude Brimble (its national officer responsible for the welfare of workers across the private security sector), the GMB’s members operational as security officers in the UK have launched the SafeGuard Campaign and Charter.
This superb and timely initiative is a direct result of the significantly increased levels of verbal abuse (and, often, violent physical assaults) that these officers have either seen, dealt with or been subjected to on a personal level.
Even those officers who haven’t suffered a direct attack are all-too-aware of the constant threat of violence and, understandably, are concerned about what the future might hold if they’re absent from work for any significant length of time and cannot afford to pay the mortgage because, reprehensibly, the company employing them ‘doesn’t do sick pay’.
As several security officers stated at yesterday’s official SafeGuard launch in Committee Room 6 at the House of Commons – aka The Pitt Room – within the Houses of Parliament, they fully understand there’s a latent risk of violence against them in their line of work. What they do not accept – and nor should they – is that violent attacks and verbal tirades must simply be tolerated ‘as part of the territory’.
In essence, the GMB’s SafeGuard Campaign wishes to see safety and basic industry standards raised quite considerably, employment practices improved, training enhanced and awareness levels heightened some way above and beyond where they sit at present.
Security Management Today (SMT) Online was asked by the GMB to be the Official Media Partner for this campaign. Given that SafeGuard ticks all the right boxes, and that we believe wholeheartedly in its core messages, we had no hesitation in signing on the dotted line. Literally, in fact.
Security officers desperately want the highly valuable and professional service they deliver to be recognised – by their employer, the clients, the police service, the Home Office and the public at large – and they also desire a high profile, zero tolerance approach to anyone who would attempt to do them harm just for fulfilling what is a massively important role.
A role necessarily played out in a society wherein moral bankruptcy and outright aggression now dominate the local community agenda to an unhealthy degree.
It’s not much for them to ask, and it simply must happen if we are to realise this part of the security business sector being recognised as a genuine profession with a defined and coherent career path, and wherein the people who ARE the security industry – the officer corps – are treated with dignity.
Every attack perpetrated on a security officer is a crime against the person. Put simply, the security industry – on a collective basis – really needs to send out a clear and long overdue message that this will no longer be tolerated in any way, shape or form.
Dedicated security officers provide a vital service to clients, the community and the nation as a whole, but they need to know they’re going to be protected, and that employers are firmly committed to improving safety standards for them while they’re on duty (and looking after their welfare when they’re not).
Again, these desires are in no way unreasonable. In truth, the fact that security personnel are having to demand these basic rights tells its own story.
In my view, in this day and age it truly beggars belief that our industry has either refused – or simply cannot be bothered – to collate and publish a set of statistics (or other forms of official data) on the number of attacks perpetrated against frontline security staff.
Mirroring the present Government’s desire to be less than minimal with the truth, perhaps the power brokers in ‘Security Guarding UK’ know full well what the outcome would be if such figures were ever made public. There’d be one hell of an outcry, and not just from the offices of SMT Online.
If the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) annual Retail Crime Survey can detail the number of attacks perpetrated against staff in that sector, is there any excuse for the non-production of similar ‘league tables’ in the security industry per se? The simple answer to that question is: ‘No’.
Those facts and figures that have been obtained by the GMB suggest that its members’ concerns over the level of attacks are most certainly justified.
It will likely disturb you to know that, across the past two years alone, over 1,550 security officers were assaulted and injured while on duty. Even more shocking is the revelation that this figure was amassed from only 35 of 660-plus solutions providers now registered as fully-fledged members of the Security Industry Authority’s (SIA) Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS).
At the very heart of this GMB initiative is the SafeGuard Charter. GMB members are calling for security industry employers, clients, the major Trade Associations and politicians of all political colours to sign up to the SafeGuard Charter and make a firm commitment to implementing its demands.
The GMB wishes to see all interested Stakeholders joining forces in order to:
work together on reducing attacks across the industry
provide adequate support and counselling for trauma and physical injuries
protect injured officers from a financial standpoint by way of proper sick pay and Injury on Duty schemes
provide robust, high quality training in the area of conflict management
establish an industry-level Code of Practice focused on reducing the risks faced by security officers in their line of work
record and analyse data on attacks across the security industry
work with the police on reducing the risk of crime and violent attacks
use new technology as a means of enhancing the safety of – and support for – security officers
The GMB’s security sector members rightly crave a level of dignity for themselves as individuals, and a good deal more respect for the professional job they undertake on a daily basis. In simple terms, these laudable desires cannot be achieved unless those security personnel are valued and supported by the basic principles and practices outlined above.
Amid all the talk of regulation, licensing, the ACS and a groundswell of opinion in favour of the need for differentiation within guarding provision, it has almost been forgotten that solutions providers have legal obligations to comply with current Health and Safety regulations.
These legal obligations include an assessment of the risk of violence being perpetrated against their security officers, taking reasonably practicable steps to reduce the risk of any violence occurring and working in conjunction with their industry partners to implement whatever measures may be necessary to safeguard – if you’ll excuse the very obvious pun – officers when on duty.
To his great credit, Geoff Zeidler – the managing director of Securitas Security Services in the UK – duly signed the Charter on Monday evening as soon as the formal proceedings were ended, as did many of his directors and managers whom he’d brought with him to the launch.
Also putting ‘pen-to-Charter’ on the day were David Greer, the chief executive at Skills for Security, the SIA’s chief executive Bill Butler and James Kelly, the BSIA’s new leader whom, one suspects, will no doubt have a substantial part to play in SafeGuard realising the GMB’s ambitions.
First to speak at the SafeGuard launch – which attracted close on 100 attendees, including GMB workplace organisers, MPs, security officers and the managers/directors of guarding companies – was none other than Alan Campbell, presently the Home Office minister responsible for policing and crime reduction.
An element of Campbell’s role, of course, is to chair the Cash-and-Valuables in Transit (CVIT) Round Table organised and run by that part of the security sector. Indeed, there has been much success in the past five or six years on reducing attacks and violent crimes against couriers in the sector, the GMB having worked closely with Campbell’s own ‘Office of State’, the BSIA, the BRC and the police on fantastic initiatives such as SaferCash and VanGuard.
As a result of successful collaboration in the CVIT sector, there’s now a far greater focus on measures that can be taken to reduce the level of attacks and to support employees either injured or mentally traumatised as a result of assaults that do still occur on an alarmingly high frequency.
Again, if CVIT employees can be provided with the necessary support and assistance from their employers – including decent sick pay schemes and Injury on Duty benefits – why is this form of support so sadly lacking for the frontline static or patrol officer?
“First of all, let me thank the GMB for raising this issue both behind the scenes and here in the public realm,” said Campbell. “There’s never been a better time for a campaign like SafeGuard to start. It’s absolutely right. We urgently need to better protect our security officers, and at the same time do more for the families of those personnel seriously injured when on duty and forced into a sometimes lengthy and difficult recuperation period.”
Having publicly thanked Jude Brimble for “bringing everyone together” on this issue because “schemes like this can only thrive if there’s a genuine partnership approach” to matters at hand, the Labour minister then stressed that much more work is still to be done.
“We need to know more on the nature of the crimes perpetrated against security staff,” urged Campbell. “It’s obvious there’s a larger cohort of young offenders involved these days, but we need robust intelligence at our fingertips. Only by harbouring that intelligence can we hope to ensure our response is targeted and correct, and that it will deliver the results we need.”
The minister stressed that much more has to be done to prevent crime. A welcome statement, but a tad ‘off message’ given that any lay person reading some of the pronouncements on the Home Office’s website could be forgiven for believing that criminality isn’t a significant issue in the UK in the year 2010.
“Retailers, managers in the banks and finance houses, high-ranking members of the police service. They must all step up to the mark and meet the very specific challenge laid down by SafeGuard,” urged the minister. “That challenge is for all of us to do much more in supporting frontline security officers, and to so sooner rather than later.”
GMB general secretary Paul Kenny was next to address the audience and, in time-honoured fashion, didn’t pull any punches whatsoever in an impassioned and quite brilliant off-the-cuff oration.
“The job of the security officer demands respect,” outlined Kenny. “These people are not something on the bottom of someone’s shoe. The industry and its Stakeholders must realise there’s a huge problem here, and that security contracts have to be effectively resourced. Lone workers, for example, must have security regimes in place that will genuinely protect them should something happen.”
Kenny – who made no bones about the fact that SafeGuard’s success will be measured in black and white statistics – went on to say: “There’s always plenty of political outcry when an attack is committed on a security officer, particularly if it’s a really serious assault, but we all know that you’re lucky if that assault even makes the local paper, let alone the national news agenda.”
Like myself and many others, he’s appalled that there’s no real bank of statistics measuring the sheer scale of the problem. “We don’t really know what the true figures are, and yet we’re talking about sickening violence against ordinary working men and women. It’s not acceptable for people to be battered and bruised on duty. Employers wouldn’t put up with it, so why should members of their workforce?”
Tellingly, Kenny then turned to Campbell. “As a politician, you would not accept someone entering The Pitt Room and either verbally or physically assaulting you. We need zero tolerance on this subject.” I sincerely hope Campbell and the other ministers in the room got the message.
According to Kenny, it’s often the case that security officers are afraid to speak up about the aggression shown towards them for fear of reprisals from their superiors. They’re also afraid to have any kind of time off work because, literally, they cannot afford to. “Basic sick pay and victim support packages have to be part of the mix,” added Kenny. Hear, hear.
While calling for the security guarding companies to be honest with themselves – and the rest of us – about the true scale of attacks, Kenny asserted that the ‘wish list’ set out in the SafeGuard Charter “cannot be achieved on the cheap”.
“Security companies have ducked this issue for far too long and, frankly, so have the politicians. They have to agree to a set of standards in the security sector below which nobody is allowed to go. The continual squeezing of margins on guarding contracts is not acceptable now and it has never been. That practice creates victims, and it’s one that would not be accepted in any other business sector.”
Taken from info4security.com
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