Johns might not have found himself wielding ‘‘the bat’’ – as the stop-go sign is known in the industry, but every day, an estimated 100 or more people go to work in the Hunter as traffic controllers.

Australian Workers Union Newcastle branch secretary Richard Downie says it’s a hard, thankless and surprisingly dangerous job, which is why his union has begun a campaign demanding safer roadwork sites for stop-go men.

And nowadays, they are not all men.

Quite a few women can be seen directing traffic around sites, and Mr Downie says the abuse that both sexes cop is beyond the pale.

‘‘We’ve had situations where bottles of urine, even faeces, have been hurled at these people simply for doing their job,’’ Mr Downie said yesterday.

Robert Ruddock, who was directing traffic outside the Royal Newcastle Hospital redevelopment yesterday, said inner-city jobs were the worst, especially at night.

‘‘People get abusive, they throw things, they fly past, they want to know what right you have to hold them up – it’s not a lot of fun sometimes,’’ Mr Ruddock said.

AWU safety officer Yossi Berger said it was almost impossible to get hard data on the numbers of accidents involving traffic controllers.

‘‘But in Queensland – the only state that keeps adequate records – at least six traffic controllers have been killed and 22 have been injured at work in the past five years,’’ Dr Berger said.

He said traffic controllers also worked in ‘‘a chemical soup’’ of diesel, silica, asphalt and exhaust fumes’’, much of which was potentially carcinogenic.

Mr Downie said traffic controllers were generally casual workers on low wages of about $22 an hour.

‘‘Many motorists treat them as second- and third-class citizens – it’s not good enough,’’ Mr Downie said.