Glasgow councillors are being urged to back safe and free transport home for late-night bar and club workers.
Trade union Unite Hospitality has been calling on employers to accept a duty of care to their staff, who are travelling at unsocial hours, through its Get Me Home Safely campaign.
The Scottish Greens supported free transport home for night workers at a party conference in October, and now some of their Glasgow councillors are bringing the campaign to the city chambers.
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They will present a motion advocating for night-time workers to receive free transport after 11pm and for an extension of night-time public transport provision.
It is expected union members will gather outside the city chambers at 9am [Thursday] to show their support for the motion.
Caitlin Lee, chair of Unite Hospitality’s Glasgow branch, who was previously the victim of sexual assault while walking home from a late-night shift at a city hotel, said the motion is “incredibly important in shifting the responsibility to employers”.
“I don’t want what happened to me to happen to any other worker, which is why we launched Get Me Home Safely,” she said. “For this campaign to succeed we need buy-in from employers, workers and politicians.
“As the biggest local authority in the country, passing Get Me Home Safely in Glasgow would send the strongest message yet to late night workers and employers alike that transport home after a late night shift is fundamentally important to their overall safety and working conditions.
“The responsibility for workers’ safety to and from late-night work should not fall on to the worker — it must be with the employers and politicians at all levels to ensure we are safe.”
Scottish Green Councillor Anthony Carroll, who will present the motion, said “urgent action” is required on the issue and he looks forward to working with Green MSP Maggie Chapman, who is working on a members’ bill in the Scottish Parliament, which could see the policy rolled out across the country.
He added: “Our night time workforce often have to rely on precarious provision of public transport or private hire to get home safely: this must simply stop being overlooked by employers.
“Unite Hospitality’s call is one that I hope all councillors can support to ensure that we enforce more companies operating un-social hours to live up to their duty of care they have to their employees.”
The Greens also want to see safety improvements, including legislation to implement clear and operational CCTV on all forms of public transport, and a legal requirement to train transport workers on preventing gender-based violence, sexual assault and harassment.
Councillor Holly Bruce said: “Night-time sectors, such as hospitality, are still exposed to threatening and abusive behaviour, assault and a lack of a safe way of getting home."
The Scottish Greens politician added: “As a previous hospitality worker, worrying about walking or cycling home in the dark due to inadequate public transport or not having enough money to pay for a taxi home was far too common an occurrence — it’s not an acceptable way to treat any workforce.”
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