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Cuts condemned

by msecadm4921

Delegates at the Wales TUC Annual Conference in Llandudno have backed a call from the shopworkers’ Union Usdaw for the police cuts in Wales to be scrapped. A motion proposed by Usdaw and passed by the Wales TUC in May condemned the Westminster Coalition’s cuts to police budgets and said the 43pc fall in violent incidents against shop staff experienced over the past 10 years is now likely to be reversed.

 

 

Usdaw launched a campaign against the 20pc cut to police budgets in November 2011, branding them a threat to the safety of all shopworkers. The cuts will lead to the loss of up to 1,600 police officers in Wales and the union fears response times to serious incidents such as armed robbery will be reduced as a result. Usdaw says the cuts will also undermine the efforts of the Union, retailers and police to deal effectively with lower level incidents of retail crime.

 

Usdaw’s 2010 Freedom from Fear survey, revealed that in the previous 12 months, 6pc of shopworkers surveyed had been subjected to violent attack, 37pc had been threatened with harm and  70pc had suffered verbal abuse.

 

The union has produced a leaflet and petition against the cuts, which can be signed at www.usdaw.org.uk/policecutspetition and union activists have been collecting signatures from  shop workers and customers.

 

Speaking in support of the motion, Usdaw delegate and Wales TUC General Council member Anne Meacock said: “The police cuts are wrong and should be scrapped. They put our communities in danger and they make it much more likely that workers in the retail sector will be subject to abuse and violence at work.”

 

“Whether you live in rural Wales or one of our cities, you need to feel safe or know that there is an organisation you can turn to if a crime is being committed. But in the name of austerity, we are getting a Wales that is far less safe than it was and a Wales where crime is increasing.”

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