PRISON OFFICERS DEMAND THE RIGHT TO STRIKE

RMTnews :: october 2007 :: www.rmt.org.uk 28 Over 20,000 prison officers took government and Prison Service officials by complete surprise on August 29 by staging a national strike over pay despite the fact that prison staff were robbed of the right to take industrial action by the Tories in 1994. The unofficial action showed the level of anger at government threats of court action and imprisoning members in order to impose a two per cent pay rise which amounts to a real-term pay cut. POA officials, general secretary Brian Caton and president Colin Moses, visited Unity House and addressed the RMT executive shortly after the walk-out to outline their long struggle for trade union rights and decent pay. Brian recounted how the POA has been the recognised trade union for the professional men and women of the Prison Service since 1939. Yet the union has been the subject of anti-trade union legislation since 1994 when he right to strike was withdrawn. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was introduced by a Conservative government determined to destroy what Margaret Thatcher described as the “last bastion of trade union militancy”. “Today, 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,” Brian said. He said that the union had welcomed the introduction of the Prison Service Pay Review Body in 2001, a mechanism that was supposed to provide an independent system to determine pay. However, the system had 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,” he said. RMT general secretary Bob Crow promised the full RMT backing for the POA’s struggle for union rights and decent pay. Shortly after the meeting RMT seconded a motion at TUC Congress, overwhelmingly backed by delegates. “It is a disgrace that, after 10 years of a Labour government, they still do not have the same rights as other public-sector workers,” he told Congress to applause. POA officials Brian Caton and Colin Moses enjoy support from officers and the executive committee at Unity House PRISON OFFICERS DEMAND THE RIGHT TO STRIKE RMT has given its full support to the Prison Officers’ Association in its campaign to win the right to strike