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Message from National Chairman - Issue 3128th April 2008 Dear Colleagues RESPONSE TO DIRECTOR GENERALS MESSAGE DATED 25th APRIL 2008 The press and media in general have been running a series of stories in regard to the events that have taken place in our workplaces. They have been concentrating on the inability of management and Government to stop drugs entering our prisons. The Director General has seen fit to brand these stories as the POA somehow pedalling inaccurate and damaging images of POA members at work. I would like to first point out that all stories attributed to POA officials on 25th April and the following weekend were true. An individual did enter a prison in Yorkshire by ladder for the purpose of selling drugs. Females believed to be prostitutes did enter an Open prison in Derbyshire and were seen leaving. All of this information has been known for a considerable amount of time by the Prison Service, NOMS and MOJ. The managing bodies of the Prison Service, as they have in the past, decided to try and bury these matters of gross mismanagement from the public. We welcome the Director Generals comments on the performance of Prison Staff that along with the admiration expressed by Jack Straw is long overdue. It is only regrettable that neither of these gentlemen saw fit to put forward to the so called Independent Prison Service Pay Review Body these same views. They in fact put forward a complete opposite view, which has resulted in the Prison Service receiving the lowest average increases in nominal earnings between 1997 and 2006. We are below the Police, Teachers, HM Forces, the General Civil Service, Nurses, Doctors and all NHS work related workers e.g. radiographers and physiotherapists. The source for this data is the Institute for Fiscal Studies using Office for National Statistics/UK Data Archive data The Director General outlined how successful our Service had been in hitting targets. We agree with the Director General. The Public Sector Prison Service is the most successful public entity in the United Kingdom due to the hard work and dedication of POA members, but never forget that hard work and dedication has brought about the following pay offers form the Prison Service since 2003:
The POA has rejected and fought against all these derogatory pay offers. Yet the same Director General and Lord Chancellor that now wish to condemn the leadership of this union for letting the public know the disgraceful way that our prisons are being under resourced by New Labour are the same Director General and Lord Chancellor that have put forward how little that they believe is the true worth of Prison Staff. This POA NEC will always work to promote and protect our membership. We will use the media to expose, both the Government and Senior Management in their mis-management of that precious resource, that is POA members goodwill. We will continue to hit the targets that we are set. These financial targets will not be solved by the imposition of a Core Day that is designed by management to reduce an already overstretched staffing of our Prisons. We stand ready to work with the MOJ to create a better and safer Prison Service but this will not be done by the New Labour trying to gag this Union. Colin Moses |
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