Recent events in the UK and further afield are a sad reminder of just how important the tenets of unity and solidarity are. Napo has a proud history of opposing those who wish to foster divisions within our workplaces and communities.
Napo want to make it clear that everyone should feel safe and protected in the workplace, and we reinforce this principle through the work of our health and safety representatives in their engagement with management at all levels, as well as the work undertaken by your Napo Branch, National Officers and National Officials.
Our direct work with your employers is obviously important, but so is the range of training opportunities that we offer through the TUC and General Federation of Trade Unions training programmes. Napo looks to provide strength to all our membership by being an organisation that prides itself on ensuring that those who join Napo and wish to become active, are offered the knowledge training and shared experience, in order to challenge the issues that our members in Probation and the Family Courts experience daily.
For example, we achieve this through education at the GFTU for those young members who want to learn more about trade unions and the significant role they have played historically in society. These will be Napo’s leaders of the future, and they need all the support that we can offer to help them effectively represent members going forward.
We also offer training for those members who are interested in addressing the concerns of our members in the office either in the field of equality, or as repping reps or those who want to assist in engaging with local and regional management on a wide range of issues that impact on our members.
These activities help bring us together as a collective and make us stronger in the face of adversity in whatever form it comes. Most recently, we have seen serious safety incidents occur in some Probation Workplaces and a rise in far-right activity in our communities. Increasingly, some cases of these have taken place in the proximity of workplaces and have presented a threat to the safety of our members. In such cases Napo will do all we can to press employers to respond appropriately to such instances. We will also continue to do what we have always done by working within the TUC and GFTU to challenging the hateful narratives that are designed to divide working people against one another.