Retailers and shop workers are pressing the government to make crime within the industry a higher priority for Britain's police forces.
The plea comes as new research shows that incidents of physical violence against shop workers have increased by 50 per cent over the past year.
According to the British Retail Consortium (BRC), which compiled the figures, threats of violence against staff also more than doubled over the period.
The retail trade association and members of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) will present the findings to home secretary Jacqui Smith today, during an event at Labour's annual conference in Bournemouth.
Both groups want the government to press police and local authorities to give crime against retailers the same level of attention as other types of crime and anti-social behaviour.
Commenting on the preliminary findings of the BRC's latest annual retail crime survey, the organisation's director general Kevin Hawkins said: "These figures show the current approach to shop crime is not working.
"Last year retail employees were subjected to around half a million incidents of abuse or violence in the work place.
"In many areas local authorities and local police are treating retail crime as if it doesn’t matter," he added.
USDAW general secretary John Hannett said: "We want local partnerships of retailers, shopworkers, councils and police to work together to rid our shops and shopping areas of this criminal and anti-social behaviour.
"This not only affects retailers and staff, but customers and the wider community as well," he stressed.
Digg 
Delicious 
Reddit 
StumbleUpon 
Google 
Technorati 
Netvouz