Contact Your Local MP - let's protect shopworkers from violence
What we are asking you to do:
Multiple times a day, colleagues in Central England Co-op stores face physical and verbal abuse when people try to buy age restricted items.
Our stores must carry out Challenge 25 checks, which means anyone who is over 18 but looks under 25 needs to carry ID if they wish to buy items such as alcohol, tobacco, or even energy drinks.
However, this means our colleagues face an impossible situation as increasing numbers of customers are responding to this legal request with violence.
As a result, we would like to appeal to you, our Members, to help raise awareness of this issue with your local MP
You can send a letter or an email.
Please help us make a difference to our hard-working colleagues.
How to write to you MP via email
· Go to https://members.parliament.uk
· Find your MP's email address
· Copy the wording below and paste it into a new email
· Send the wording to your MP's email address with the subject line ‘Shopworkers being put at risk by asking shoppers for ID’
· Insert your name and home address at the base of your email: this must be done otherwise the MP will not be able to work on your behalf
Email example
Dear
The Chief Executive of my local Central England Co-op, Debbie Robinson, has raised an important issue with Members of the Society, regarding the safety of retail shop workers.
Consequently, I would like you, my local MP, to raise awareness in parliament around a very particular risk they face.
We know that you recognise the vital contribution retail workers have made throughout the past 18 months. When everyone else was told to stay at home, retail workers got up, put their uniform on, and went to work to ensure communities got fed and had access to essential supplies. They have truly been the ‘hidden heroes’ of the pandemic.
However, the issue of violence and abuse in shops continues to get worse.
Specifically, I would like to draw your attention to an impossible situation retail workers face multiple times a day. Under the law, anyone processing the sale of age-restricted products, such as alcohol, energy drinks and tobacco, is obliged to request age verification. However, this act of enforcing the law is seeing increasing numbers of customers are responding with violence.
Shopworkers shouldn’t have to face these risks while serving their community and as my constituent MP, I would like you to take this issue on and raise the matter in Parliament.
Everyone has the right to go to work and return home safely. Please consider my ask before the risk of abuse and violence to those working in retail becomes too high and people no longer want to work in the industry.
I look forward to your earliest reply.
Yours sincerely
How to write to your MP via letter
· Go to https://members.parliament.uk and type your home postcode into the search box
· Find your MP details
· Download letter HERE and print out
· Insert the name and title of MP above the address
· Insert the name of MP after Dear
· Insert your name and home address after Yours Sincerely (this must be done otherwise the MP will not be able to work on your behalf.
· Post the letter to your MP in a stamped envelope