The Co-op has become the latest supermarket chain to say it will not enforce new mask wearing rules to avoid their staff being abused by customers.
Mask rules were brought back in on Tuesday after concerns about the Omicron coronavirus variant.
Supermarkets are taking a light touch approach with Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and Iceland not challenging customers.
Industry body The British Retail Consortium said it is up to police to enforce face mask rules, not retailers.
Co-op policy director Paul Gerrard told Radio 5 Live that while Co-op would put up signs to remind people to wear masks, staff would not refuse to serve customers who were not wearing one.
“We have seen throughout the pandemic that the enforcement of social distancing rules has been a flashpoint for enormous levels of violence and abuse against my colleagues, and we will not put our colleagues at risk,” he said.
There was a rise in violence towards shop workers before the pandemic, and that rise has continued, he said.
“It’s not just the frequency, it’s the violence and the seriousness of it,” Mr Gerrard said. “Every day, in the 2,600 Co-op shops, ten of my colleagues will be physically attacked.”
“Five of them will be attacked with a weapon – it could be a syringe, it could be a knife, it could be a hammer – and that’s not unusual to the Co-op.”
Mask policies
Tesco will just be putting signs up to remind customers about face mask rules, the BBC understands.
Aldi and Lidl are also understood to have no plans for staff to challenge customers, although they will also be putting up posters.
Sainsbury’s said it will have “greeters and security guards at the front of our supermarkets” to remind people to wear masks.
Morrisons is expected to have staff checking face mask wearing at the front of the shops, and hand out masks to customers that have forgotten them.
Asda has also said it will hand out masks to customers who have forgotten to bring them.
Iceland boss Richard Walker told the BBC’s Radio Four Today programme on Tuesday that it supported the reintroduction of face masks, but said it would be unfair to ask staff to confront people not wearing masks.
“They are already working under significant pressure, especially as we hit the busiest trading month of the year.”
“I won’t be putting my staff at any risk of confrontation or abuse,” he said.
Mr Walker said in the first lockdown from March to May last year, incidents of verbal abuse dropped from more than 50 incidents a week to five a week after staff were told not to challenge customers.
What are the new rules?
From Tuesday, in England face coverings must now be worn in shops, shopping centres, in transport hubs and on public transport, according to government guidance.
There are different rules in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but they are broadly similar.
In England, the Department for Transport said people should wear face coverings in “crowded and enclosed areas where you come into contact with people you do not usually meet”.
People who don’t wear masks on public transport can get fined £200 and upwards, it tweeted.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council says police forces will “continue to enforce coronavirus regulations where it is necessary to do so” and will support transport and retail staff in ensuring people wear face coverings.
Assistant Chief Constable Owen Weatherill says officers will respond to incidents where “individuals are violent or abusive towards staff or members of the public” and will be more visible in towns and shopping centres.
‘It’s hard work policing mask wearing’
Nigel Bourne, the owner of Sussex-based cookware retailer Rye Cookshop, tells the BBC face covering rules should “never have gone out in the first place”.
He says he wishes the government would “be stronger on advertising” how people should wear masks, having experienced some customers wearing them wrongly.
The shop owner, based in Rye, East Sussex, says he hasn’t had to call the police over people not wearing masks as no-one has been abusive. But he has had to ask people to leave his shop.
“It’s hard work all the policing of it. We do it for ourselves and for other people. I do not want to work in a shop where people are not wearing their masks properly.
“If the law says you have got to wear it, wear it.”
‘Not the police’
The BRC said in February this year that one retailer had reported that when reminding customers to shop alone, they were confronted and shouted at by an individual, who returned to the store later that afternoon “brandishing an axe [and] … threatening the store team with it”.
A shopworker at another retailer asked a couple to put on face coverings. They left the store, only to return hours later when they began “coughing on staff, insisting they had coronavirus, which made the staff feel distressed.”
Another said staff had been “threatened with a syringe… [because a shoplifter] was stealing cheese and said if I didn’t get out of the way he would stab me.”
Incidents of physical violence increased by two thirds at the time, the BRC said, with flashpoints mainly being around coronavirus rules.