SCOTLAND: REPORTING ON THE SCOTTISH PAY DEAL

It took a long time to reach agreement, but it was worth the wait...

It took an extraordinary length of time to get the pay deal over the line, delays that frustrated the membership and the SNC, delays due to negotiations back and forth between the TUS and SPS. During this time, we also had two separate ballots for POAS members to vote on the pay deal and a ballot on whether or not to take strike action. The membership eventually voted 77% in favour of accepting the deal, and in my opinion it was worth the wait, considering that the first offer from Scottish Government was a 3.5% one-year deal but this was unacceptable to the constituent unions that form the TUS.

It must be pointed out that part of the delay is due to the three separate unions that form the TUS having mandates from their own membership as well as the collective wishes of the TUS, also negotiations with the SPS who then must consult with Scottish Government to see if what we ask is affordable.

From December 2024 all staff who work full-time in the Scottish Prison Service will work a 35-hour week. This was part of POAS policy passed at Scottish Conference 2022. We were also able to achieve another POAS policy position of double time for weekend ex-gratia working and 1.5 for midweek ex gratia working.

Along with the enhancement of “dirty protest” money, in all we managed to achieve four conference policy changes demanded by the membership and it is important to remind everyone that we have a no-compulsory redundancy agreement extended with the employer.

Further, we also managed to ensure that staff waiting on their pay increments will be getting paid this on 1 April going forward and not needing to wait until the completion of a pay deal. This is important for new and promoted staff who deserve this money timeously.

We have members in this union from Band B and above and the rate of pay at the top end of the bandings from April 2024 are as follows.

• Band B - £26,565
• Band C - £32,200
• Band D - £40,850
• Band E - £46,935
• Band F - £53,607

As recently as April 2018 the top of a D band wage was £30,356, so in six years (three pay deals) we have managed to increase the pay by over 34% and reduce the working week by two hours.

Further to this, just recently I came across my original contract for the SPS from March 1990. I was paid just over £11K for a 39-hour week, I thought this was a good wage, but then we had years of half civil servant percentage wage rises, austerity hit us with 1% pay rises when cost was rising through the roof, so the wage/take home pay depreciated considerably to the point that it was an insult to prison officers and prison staff.

I wondered, if I thought the £11k was good in 1990 what would the equivalent wage be today, to get us back to that level, taking into account the cost of living, full percentage pay rises etc.

A smarter guy than me worked out that that wage in today’s terms would be circa £39,500 and that’s for a 39 hour week!

The last three pay deals have gone some way not only to recover the loss imposed on us but to get us ahead of the game and reduce the working week.

But let’s be clear, this doesn’t mean that we now accept less than what we know we are worth in the future.

We will always remind the SPS/SG of the job that prison officers do and the conditions that they work in – in some of the most volatile, violent workplaces in Scotland. And we will never let them forget that during the Covid pandemic, prisons still required prison officers to operate the jails 24/7. The SPS could not have run our prisons without our members putting themselves in an even more perilous position with the added risk of contracting a virus that they could have taken to their family etc, while others worked from home.