On 5 February, senior officials from Napo, UNISON, and GMB met with NOMS Chief Executive Michael Spurr to make the case for the Justice Secretary to rethink his decision to offer probation staff a 0% pay rise this year.
Following the recent vote by UNISON members to reject the current ‘offer’ by a margin of 96%, and to take industrial action to seek to improve it, Napo’s NEC has this week agreed to work with UNISON on the pay campaign and has not ruled out industrial action if it should become necessary.
At the meeting with Michael Spurr the three probation unions put on record their wish to see a negotiated settlement to the 2014 pay dispute. We made the following points in support of our argument:
• Probation staff are going through the most stressful and distressing time of most peoples’ careers as a result of Transforming Rehabilitation;
• Offering these staff a 0% pay rise at this time, after all they have been through, is an absolute insult and speaks volumes of the regard with which staff are held by the Ministry of Justice;
• We know that a 1% pay rise was put to Ministers last year to settle our pay claim, but that Ministers chose not to support this;
• At the same time as Ministers apparently decided not to offer probation staff a 1% pay rise, they were signing off a 1% pay rise for Cafcass staff;
• Union members in the NPS and the CRCs cannot understand why the Justice Secretary signed off a 1% pay rise for their former colleagues in Cafcass, but so far has refused to do so for them;
• It is going to be very difficult for the unions to work with NOMS on the terms and conditions harmonisation agenda that the NPS wants while we are stuck in this pay dispute.
Michael Spurr agreed to take the strength of feeling over the 2014 pay dispute back to the Justice Secretary. We hope to get a positive response soon.
The unions will meet again to consider our options once we have received a response from Michael Spurr to our representations.