Prison officers deserve support
The Department relied on a Supreme Court judgement to force officers to work compulsory overtime this case involved a pregnant officer.
The Prison Service's latest proposals included reducing staff and therefore safety levels, and asking prison officers to accept a 47-hour working week.
This is at a time when they say they want prison officers to have family-friendly work policies. How friendly is it to ask people to accept a longer standard 47-hour working week.
The Prison Officers Association (POA) put forward a proposal that would save a similar amount of money. This proposal is being independently verified by the Irish Productivity Centre.
The association also asked management to go to the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) to try to find a just solution. This request was rejected.
A press release from the Department of Justice indicated that the minister, Michael McDowell, would not authorise the Prison Service to enter any forum where the POA proposal would be up for discussion.
This is like going to a court where the judge says that he only wants to hear from the prosecution and not from the defence, and that the guilt or innocence of the accused will be decided solely on the basis of the prosecution evidence.
It's even more incredible when you consider that the LRC is the state's foremost dispute resolution body, and yet one of the Government's own departments will not go to it to try to find a just and a fair solution to the matter.
The minister has asked prison officers to come back to the table now to negotiate the annualised hours system.
What the minister seems to forget is that his proposal was rejected by over 99% of our members. If the minister's offer is so good, are all of our members wrong not to want to work a standard 47-hour working week and compromise their safety?
The minister must realise that prison closures will mean the upheaval of prison officers, their wives and families. His threats to close prisons have a huge impact on prison officers' families.
To see wives and children worried about being uprooted from their friends and family is a step too far.
Industrial relations of this type have not been seen since the time of the Great Lock-out.
The minister seems to suggest the POA and its members will be responsible for fewer prison places. It is the minister who has the power to open or close a prison not the POA.
Prison officers perform their duties in a very professional manner, in difficult and often dangerous circumstances. They should receive the recognition and support they deserve for the valuable service they provide to society.
We saw only recently how dangerous the job can be when 18 prison officers were hospitalised because of disturbances in Mountjoy. Another prison officer had his family home attacked, not for the first time, in Limerick.
Another was assaulted in Cloverhill on Sunday, November 16, as he prevented drugs being thrown over the wall of the prison.
Prison officers have seen a 63% increase in serious assaults over the past four years. Yet the only response from the authorities is to propose that we reduce, with all its consequent risks, the input from prison officers by up to one million hours each year.
Nigel Mallen,
Information Officer,
Irish Prison Officers Association,
18, Merrion Square,
Dublin 2.
