Edinburgh council backs plea for employers to fund transport home for late-night workers

Councillors hear from hotel worker sexually assaulted on way home

Edinburgh’s licensing bosses are being urged to make it a condition for late-night opening that employers must pay for safe transport home for their staff.

Councillors heard a moving plea from a former hotel worker who had been sexually assaulted after leaving her shift and said the price of a taxi home was often the equivalent of two or three hours’ wages for hospitality workers.

Caitlin Lee asked the council to back the Unite union’s “Get Me Home Safely” campaign, which wants free transport home for staff to be made a prerequisite for all new liquor licenses.

And she described her own experience in Glasgow. “I was a hospitality worker in a five-star hotel. I finished my shift, my last bus didn't show up, my employer neglected to provide safe transport home and that resulted in me being sexually assaulted in the centre of Glasgow. I'm not the only case. This is a real issue for hospitality workers.”

She said a in survey of Glasgow hospitality workers, 89 per cent said they had been sexually harassed in their workplace or leaving their workplace and a wider survey across Britain and Ireland found 60 per cent saying the same.

Ms Lee said: “We need to use every power that we can to ensure that this is not the reality for any more workers in late-night businesses. Hospitality workers are the lowest paid in the economy so for us to pay for our taxis home we are losing out on sometimes three hours of wages. I lost on average two hours' wages to get a taxi home.

“Businesses are choosing profits and corporate greed over the safety of their workers. A business's responsibility does not end after a shift, it ends when you get in your house. We have a system where you come in, you do your 12-hour shift, you're the one making the profit and then you're left at 12 o'clock at night, 3am or 5am, to navigate your own way home. It's not acceptable.

The cost of a taxi home for hospitality workers can often be the equivalent of two or three hours' wages. Picture Ian Rutherford.

“We need to reassess the licensing to ensure that any business that wants to operate with a licence past 11pm needs to have safe provision to support hospitality workers getting home safe.”

The council unanimously agreed a motion from Green councillor Alys Mumford backing the “Get Me Home Safely” campaign. The council cannot instruct the licensing board to change its policies, but it agreed to encourage the board to consider the campaign’s principles and that the council would submit the motion as part of the review of licensing policies currently under way.

After the meeting the council posted from its official Twitter account: “We are committed to safeguarding hospitality workers, and fully support Unite’s ‘Get Me Home Safely’ campaign.”