Judy McKnight's Napolog

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Web log of Napo's general secretary

November 27, 2007

Jack and Gordon

Jack

This week is a week of meeting Ministers; yesterday Jack Straw and today Gordon Brown.

Yesterday’s meeting with Jack Straw was dominated by the budget cuts and our trying to get over to him the full impact of the cuts as proposed for the Probation Service. We explained our professional concerns in relation to the impact of the cuts on reducing re-offending, but also our legitimate trade union concerns in relation to redundancies, workloads and attacks on pay and conditions.

We have now had confirmation from David Hanson that Areas will now have an average of a 2% increase next year, instead of the flat cash originally proposed.

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This still leaves a major gap however between what is needed and what is available, let alone taking account of the pay rise we need to negotiate next year.

We had a good meeting with Jack though and Maria Eagle was also at the meeting. We were able to get over our concerns on cuts and also explain our fears at what the cuts might mean for the new training arrangements. We also pressed home the issues of workloads, of the need to formally tell us that the arbitrary target for sub-contracting has gone, of the need to kill off the benefit sanction pilots, the need to restore discretion in breach and the need to give us back a clear Probation Directorate and a Director with clout for the Service.

We also stressed the issues of staff morale and the need for action to give staff a morale boost.

We also stressed that if the cuts remained at their current level, if workloads were not addressed, and if we could not negotiate a decent pay increase, then industrial action may be a real possibility this year.

Big announcements to watch out for, which may have a bearing on our cuts, are Patrick Carter's report on prisons, due out before Christmas, and the much delayed Ursuala Brennan Report on restructuring the Ministry of Justice.

Gordon

This afternoon I was part of a TUC delegation to meet Gordon Brown.

The main item on the agenda was pressing the Government to support the draft European Union Temporary Agency Workers Directive. Here is a TUC press statement on the issues.

It was clearly a stressful day for Gordon and meeting us was probably light relief compared to the media scrum he had been facing over payments to the Labour Party.

We also had "words" on public sector pay and the problems caused by the 2% restriction.

He “heard what we said” but clearly remains determined to keep public sector pay down for the next few years.We were equally clear about the consequences of such action.

Usually when you go to No 10 you have your phone removed for security.

Today we went in the back way because of the media scrum so I could do the corny bit and take some photos!

Here is me in the Cabinet Office Room, and below is one of Tony Woodley, Gen Sec of Unite,(T&G), putting down a ceremonial sword which had briefly hung over Brendan Barber!

I hope the security forces don’t suddenly knock the door and confiscate my phone!

Posted by jmcknight at November 27, 2007 07:23 PM

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