Beset by customer violence, workers demand protection

NEW YORK >> There was the customer who stomped on the face of a private security guard. Then the one who lit herself on fire inside a store. The person who drank gasoline and the one who brandished an ax. An intoxicated shopper who pelted a worker with soup cans. A shoplifter who punched a night manager twice in the head and then shot him in the chest.

And there was the shooting that killed 10 people, including three workers, at the King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colo., in March 2021.

In her 37 years in the grocery industry, said Kim

Cordova, a union president in Colorado, she had never experienced the level of violence. Just as critical at contract talks, if not more so, was safety.

During the early months of the pandemic, stores became tinderboxes for a society frazzled by lockdowns, protests and mask mandates. Many workers say that tension persists, even as pandemic tension.

According to a New York Times analysis of FBI assault data, the number of assaults in many retail establishments has been increasing at a faster pace than the national average.

From 2018 to 2020, assaults reported to the FBI by law enforcement agencies overall rose 42%; they increased 63% in grocery stores and 75% in convenience stores. The assault numbers can fluctuate depending on how many local police departments and other law enforcement agencies report to the FBI, and more departments reported in 2020 than 2018. Of the more than 2 million assaults reported to the FBI by law enforcement agencies across the country in 2020, more than 82,000 — about 4% — were at shopping malls, convenience stores and other similar locations. Some employees want more armed security guards who can take an active role in stopping theft, and they want more stores to permanently bar rowdy or violent customers,