Following on from our mail-out last Friday and developments around the ECSL scheme, to reiterate that, the probation trade unions will be going back to the employer to continue talks and to demand urgent measures to address this situation. Through feedback from our meetings with members, we have developed and shared a suite of measures to fix the workload crisis. These go much further than those already agreed with the employer and we will be pushing HMPPS to implement these as a matter of urgency. Our Operation Protect campaign remains the highest priority for the unions and we intend to press on with our efforts to bring down workloads and the stress and dangers that this brings to staff and communities.
We are in the process of finalising our letter with guidance for members to urgently write to their MPs – this will go out in a separate mail-out, and we intend to also write to the new Chief Inspector of Probation, Martin Jones CBE, as well as following up on our engagement with the Justice Select Committee.
Lunchtime activities
We are planning some new lunchtime events in other regions, following on from the January one we held in London, and proposed are Friday 19th April in Sheffield and Friday 14th June in Cardiff. This of course is alongside any joint trade union lunchtime activities members might want to do in their local offices on that day too, as well as on any other day. We’ll get more information out on this soon too.
The next joint trade union online all-members’ meeting: will be on Tuesday 23rd April 12.30 to 13.30pm and joining links will also be circulated in due to course. Please put this date in your calendar now and let colleagues know.
Contact your Link National Officer and Official for more details or updates on the aboe.
Please continue to:
- Wear YELLOW at Work, especially on a Friday, to show solidarity with the Campaign, this could be even something little as a yellow tie, jewellery, scarf, anything yellow really; get in touch with Annoesjka at avalent@napo.org.uk if you would like Napo Yellow Napo Lanyards sent to you for yourself and to give to colleagues;
- Use the Operation Protect Logo on internal Teams calls (can be downloaded at https://www.napo.org.uk/operation-protect) or just pick a plain yellow background for any other meetings; and
Ask for Operation Protect to be on all meeting agendas, make sure excessive workloads for all staff/grades are being discussed