One in four

Violence against women, including domestic violence has long been recognised as a trade union issue. Many years ago a founder of the UK’s women’s refuge movement wrote a book whose title said it all: “Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear”.

One in four women suffers domestic violence in their lifetime. So it’s no wonder that at the recent Unite Women’s Conference this was a passionate debate. Discussions went on into the evening with women exchanging their own harrowing stories, heartbreaking accounts of violence in their homes by fathers and partners.

According to government figures domestic violence accounts for 16% of all violent crime and results in two homicides a week. An estimated 750,000 children witness domestic violence every year.

What can trade unions do? Having women union reps is an important step as domestic violence is a gender sensitive issue and often results in absences with women losing pay and facing disciplinary action. As important as help for individuals is a well publicised domestic violence workplace policy made by collective agreement between the union and employer. These agreements can be very effective.

That’s why I was really very pleased when a Facebook ‘fan’ of mine pledged to get working on such a policy in her workplace. Like me, she was inspired by all the women Unite members who spoke so frankly about their lives and their determination to get union action on this in all our workplaces.

For more information, go to the End Violence Against Women website. 

Comments

[Liz McInnes]

I am that Facebook fan! As a staff side we are working on introducing a policy at our NHS Trust to help employees who are suffering domestic abuse . NHS Employers has a really good model policy which we are using as a basis. The sad thing is that when we've discussed this policy so many people, male and female have talked about their own experience of it, from the male rep who tells harrowing stories of being phoned by his own grandchildren to be told that their mum (his daughter) is being beaten up again, to the female rep who talks about the fear she felt as a child listening to raised voices and screams night after night. Domestic abuse touches many people in many different ways and we need to make sure that our employers recignise this and know how to deal sensitively with problems that arise in the workplace. Will let you know how we get on.

[Liz McInnes]

Well, we are making slow progress with implementing a Policy on Domestic Abuse here at Pennine Acute NHS Trust. The wheels turn exceedingly slowly here!

Finally we have got a draft policy on the agenda of our Central Policy Group. Then we had to persuade our (male) HR Director that this really was a workplace issue and that tere were many things that the employer could do, from granting special leave to ensuring the employee's safety and anonymity in the workplace. We also had to gently explain to one of our younger (male) managers that the Special Leave policy would not be an appropriate place to lodge this entirely separate policy. But we are getting there, slowly but surely.
I just want to ensure that we are not put into the same situation that we were a few weeks ago, with a member who had been made homeless due to domestic abuse. Our caring employers response? To put her on a disciplinary charge of not following the correct procedure when notifying sickness absence. We can't allow that to happen again. We owe it to our members.