We have had some excellent feedback from member’s, associate and retired members and outside allies to last week’s BBC Panorama programme. Whilst there were a couple of grumbles the key questions that have come in were around what happens next?
The social media activity that followed this weeks Panorama expose into the state of the Probation service shows that the issues highlighted in the programme are attracting an increasingly wider and very concerned audience.
Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who made their way to Nottingham last week for a hugely successful Annual General Meeting. By now, all attendees should have received a survey asking for your feedback on the way in which conference was conducted, the timetable of events and, the without doubt, excellent East Midlands Conference Centre.
As I previously reported the TUC public sector pay campaign is being launched on 17th October with a Parliamentary Lobby (2:00) followed by an evening Rally in Parliament Square (6:30).
National Vice-Chair Tina Williams will be amongst those addressing the rally which seeks to bring together senior union officials as well as practitioners from across the public sector to highlight the damage done by several years of austerity pay policies.
Last week saw a meeting (at last) between the Probation Unions and the HMPPS senior managers in charge of the shared services division (SSCL). This is the organisation who are responsible for paying NPS staff correctly and administering the deduction of pension contributions to the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS).
There have been a number of mail outs from Napo over the last couple of months which include details of how members should complain if they spot an anomaly in their pay.
I have been advised of a change to the start time for the TUC’s public sector pay rally taking place in Parliament Square on Tuesday 17 October
The rally now takes place from 7pm to 8pm – with the TUC asking people to assemble at Parliament Square at 6.30pm
The reason for this is so that:
This week’s TUC in Brighton had a definite feel of renewed hope following the unexpected result of the General Election.
The Trade Union Congress gets underway in Brighton on Sunday and Napo has two keynote motions which will be up for debate on Tuesday morning. We always have two motions at the TUC and they always get carried; but I have been doing some work with the senior TUC leadership to try and secure a bit more than the usual ‘supported by the General Council’ statement that precedes the vote by Congress.
As always I had a huge list of issues that I wanted to cover this week, but
Here is the media release that we are issuing shortly
MEDIA RELEASE EMBARGOED UNTIL 7:00 AM THURSDAY 31ST AUGUST 2017
Union claims Probation services in Gloucestershire are in crisis
The leader of the largest trade union representing Probation staff in England and Wales today claimed that service provision in Gloucestershire, part of the Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) owned by Aurelius/Working Links is in a state of chaos and represents a danger to public safety.
