CESI, which also represents officials and employees from public administrations and the different public services at the European, national and local and regional levels, witnesses increasingly often reports from member organisations and affiliates about increasing levels of third party violence against public sector staff, including nurses, police forces, teachers and public administration personnel.

A recent manifest of CESI on a better prevention and management of such third party violence, developed in the context of an EU co-funded project on ‘Trade unions for zero tolerance towards violence at work: Protecting public sector workes in Europe’, confirms that the situation has recently been acutely worsening as Covid lockdown measures have been leading to increasing social and economic tensions for many people who then, increasingly often, discharge frustration as aggressive behaviour towards public service workers.

Secretary Genreal Klaus Heeger said: “It appears that the pandemic has brought an additional source of stress to the work of public services, hindering the prevention of violence in the workplace. Now more than ever, trade unions can and must play a central role in the fight against third-party violence, and they need to be supported by the EU and national governments and decision makers. The new EU strategic framework on health and safety at work should foresee a particular field of action for public sector personnel that faces violence at work.”

Responding to the consultation of the European Commission on priority fields for the next EU strategic framework, CESI thus makes a number of recommendations for the EU and the Member States to help fight against third party violence against public sector staff, inclucing:

• greater responsibility for employers and governments to tackle the issue and protect their workers, coupled with a greater involvement of trade-unions as ‘reliable partners’ both for governments and for workers on the issue of third-party violence.
• specific training to provide workers with the opportunities and the tools to know how act when encountering violent behaviour.
• supporting and funding more exchanges of best practices and capacity-building for social partners, including sectoral ones at the EU and national levels.
• supporting and funding more awareness-raising and communication campaigns for social partners, including sectoral ones at the EU and national levels.