Almost 40,000 violent assaults on staff in the public sector have been reported this year including thousands in the north and north-east.
Trade union Unison’s annual survey found there were 37,662 attacks reported, though officials claimed the figures were “only the tip of the iceberg”.
Unison called on the Scottish Government to extend violence at work legislation to cover all public sector workers and not just emergency staff.
“The Scottish Government must move to address this issue,” officials said in their “Violence at Work: A Survey of Unison Employers in Scotland, 2019” report.
Scott Donohoe, chairman of Unison’s health and safety committee, said: “These figures are brutal and they are only the incidents that we know about.
“There could be thousands more and we believe this is only the tip of the iceberg.
“Some employers seem to believe that violence is part of the job. We don’t believe that that and we are working to change that culture.”
The figures were obtained using Freedom of Information (FoI) legislation and showed a reduction from the 2018 total of 40,568.
The report said the scale of the problem was “massive” and called for an accurate and reliable system of reporting assaults that did not have to rely on FoI.
Of the 2019 total of 37,662, most attacks occurred in local government (20,867) followed by health (14,714).
When broken down by council area, 344 occurred in Aberdeen City and 936 in Aberdeenshire.
No figures were available for Highland Council or Moray.
There were fewer than five attacks on Shetland Council staff, 13 on Orkney Council workers.
In Western Isles Council, the number had more than doubled to 192 since the previous year.
A total of 2,206 attacks were carried out on NHS Grampian staff and 1,401 in NHS Highland.
NHS Highland said it takes prevention of violence and aggression “very seriously” and was working with staff and managers to support colleagues.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “Those who threaten or abuse staff can be prosecuted using, for example, offences of assault and threatening and abusive behaviour. More serious attacks on any worker can be prosecuted under the common law of assault, with penalties all the way up to life imprisonment.”
