Retail workers push for safer stores in New York

“We are declaring and demanding today that retail workers’ health and safety must be valued at least as much as the merchandise they’re selling.”

That’s what Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), told a rally for workers and legislators in New York’s capitol building in Albany on March 5.

While worker safety is often cited by the National Retail Federation and other industry leaders as a reason to combat the (occasionally overstated) problem of shoplifting rings, Appelbaum suggested that workers have more pressing concerns.

“Twice as many people died in retail stores in 2022 as in 2016,” Appelbaum continued, “yet most of what we hear in the media is that shoplifting is the growing problem.”

The rally was to support a New York State Senate bill, the Retail Worker Safety Act, which makes no mention of shoplifting or theft.

What the bill targets instead is violence retail workers experienced at the height of the pandemic from customers irate about masking policies and, worse, active shooter scenarios, like the racially motivated shooting of 13 people, including four workers, at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo in 2022. (Ten died, one of them an employee.)

The retail workers’ union surveyed its members about violence and harassment:

• More than 80% said they’re worried about an active shooter coming into their stores.
• 57% said they’ve been subject to intimidating conduct or verbal harassment from a customer, manager, or coworker within the last year.

Safety features: The proposed law would require New York retailers to put violence prevention programs in writing and distribute them to workers. They'd also have to train workers in de-escalation tactics and active shooter drills.

Retailers that employ more than 50 employees would be required to install panic buttons, and those that’ve had repeated incidents of violence would be required to hire a security guard; the number of incidents would be determined by the state’s labor department.

“As a retail worker in New York City, I have been harassed, threatened, and intimidated numerous times, simply for doing my job,” Sherry Perkov, who identified as working at a large luxury retailer, stated in a press release from the union. “This is why we need the Retail Worker Safety Act: It will force employers to take my safety, and the safety of my coworkers, seriously.”