The General Secretary

October 2007

PRISON STRIKE - THE REAL STORY

To those few critics in public life.

“Prisons play a fundamental role in the Criminal Justice System, the professional men and women of the Service deal with the people society deem too great a risk to be at large.”

“Need to Change”

The POA has been the recognised free and independent trades union for the professional, men and women of the Prison Service since 1939. This Union welcomes change, embraces change and, of course, resists change when it is right to do so.

The Prison Service is constantly changing, reacting to political demands, leaping from one crisis to another, but has anything improved through these changes over the years? We say, prisons are still overcrowded, short of front-line staff and regrettably have a management that conducts industrial relations through the Courts, rather than through negotiation.

“Public Service not Private Profit”

The future of the Prison Service is critical and we have called on the new Justice Secretary to ensure prisons are safe, secure and fit for purpose. Mr Straw and the Government have to ensure the needs of the Service are met, with the financial support it needs to provide more prison places and structured regimes to help prepare offenders for release, otherwise we will witness more and more dangerous prisoners released because the Service has failed to address their needs.

The public has lost confidence in the Criminal Justice System.

It is the Government’s responsibility to manage the prison estate and not the “private sector”.

“Trades Union Rights”

This Union has been the subject of anti-trades union legislation since 1994. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (“The Act”) was introduced by a Conservative Government who was determined to destroy what Margaret Thatcher described as the “last bastion of trades union militancy”.

So we continue to campaign. We will take our campaign to the European Court of Human Rights, as other trades unions have done but this should not be necessary.

It is morally and legally wrong that it remains in force.

Prison Service Pay Review Body

We welcomed the introduction of the Prison Service Pay Review Body in 2001, a mechanism that was supposed to provide an independent system to determine our members’ pay.

However, the system has been tarnished with interference from the Prison Service and Government.

We have been subjected to staged pay awards, below inflation pay awards and starved of our fundamental rights to collective bargaining.

Is the “fairness” promised by the new Labour Government right and proper? NO.

The Summer of Discontent

On the 29th August 2007 the POA took national strike action for the first time in 68 years. The question must be asked – why?

Because the Government refused to follow the recommendations of the Pay Review Body for an award of 2.5%, even though that was below the rate of inflation and 1.3% below the RPI;

Because the Government undertook to the ILO that they would follow the Pay Review Body’s recommendations - they didn’t, downgrading the pay award to 1.9%;