Cronin House
245 Church Street
London
N9 9HW
Telephone: 020 8803 0255
Membership enquiries: membership@poauk.org.uk
General enquiries:
general@poauk.org.uk
SCOTLAND: NEW BEGINNINGS AND SAD FAREWELLS
Could Scotland’s prison officers be about to make use of their right to strike for the first time, over pay? The strength of feeling from the pay ballot would suggest so
NEW OFFICE FACILITY IN SCOTLAND
Following the protracted period involved in completing the sale of the POA offices in Calder Road Edinburgh, we are at the time of writing very close to being fully in place in the new offices in Clackmannanshire.
Bowden House is an office facility on a purpose build office estate in the centre of Alloa and provides us with an excellent office facility that is situated ideally, in the central belt of Scotland. The travel distances to most of the prisons in Scotland can be done in less than an hour, at least half of them in under 40 minutes. The same is true of the SPS HQ, the SPSC and we are less than an hour to the Scottish parliament.
Once we have the IT completed, dozens of boxes opened and relocated, and the soft services in place, we will have a facility that will stand us in good stead in Scotland for decades to come.
PAY SITUATION
We have two separate pay negotiations ongoing at the moment. The first is the pay deal for all prisons in Scotland and the offer was for circa 2% across the board. We conducted a workplace ballot on the offer which was overwhelmingly rejected by the membership.
There was an 84% response rate and a 98.5% rejection of the offer. There is a further meeting scheduled for the last week in August where we anticipate a further offer, which if is again rejected will result in a ballot in Scotland for industrial action. The outcomes of both of those issues will likely be known by the time the magazine is published.
We have also balloted our members in the State Hospital Carstairs, here in Scotland. The offer here was for 5% across the board in the NHS. Again the result was overwhelming with a response rate through a workplace ballot of 96%. 92% of those who responded voted to reject the offer, and of those, 88% voted in favour of taking industrial action should it come to that. The offer has been unanimously rejected across all health trade unions as reported through STAC, and the trade unions are coordinating legislative ballots for industrial action with a view to organising the action to coincide with one another.
The POA will be part of that strategy and steps are being put in place now to organise a ballot for industrial action. At this stage there is no offer form the Scottish government to return to the table where they intent to provide an alternative offer.