Young workers demand safe transport home

The Scottish TUC last month relaunched its Safe Home campaign at its annual youth conference in Glasgow.

The campaign aims to ensure workplaces, particularly those with employers whose staff are expected to work unsociable hours, provide safe transport home for workers at the end of their shift.

It includes a new survey aiming to highlight the experiences of workers travelling to and from work late at night.

STUC youth committee chair Fred Bayer said young trade unionists are calling time “on workplaces forcing their staff into potentially dangerous and costly situations when seeking just to get to or from their work”.

And he said late night economy workers face the “grim choice” of unaffordable taxis or walking home at night.

Building on the Unite general union’s Get Me Home Safely campaign, the STUC initiative includes calling on the Scottish government to include safe home policies within its Fair Work agenda.

STUC general secretary Roz Foyer said: “In a cost-of-living crisis, with endemic low pay for young people, it cannot be right that they are spending fortunes of their wages on taxis home at the end of their shift or, worse still, finding no way home with inadequate public transport.

“This is an immediate demand from our young workers and we need local authorities, Scottish Government and all politicians across the country to hear their voices loud and clear.”