BATHURST Jail inmates will be placed in a lockdown on Monday as Corrective Services officers stop work to protest proposed wage cuts to public servants.
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The jail lockdown, to run from 9am until 1pm, will result from a stop work meeting organised by the Public Service Association, opposing proposals by Premier Barry O’Farrell to slash public servant wages and conditions.
The proposed cuts include ending 17.5 per cent leave loadings for public servants and abolishing penalty rates for shift workers.
Last Monday Bathurst Local Court adjourned matters involving inmates set down for the day of the stop work meeting after noting there would be no officers to transport inmates to court or supervise them for audio visual link-ups.
Although the stop work meeting will affect all public service industries, including the Department of Lands, DoCS, Department of Housing and other NSW Government agencies, it is believed the Department of Corrective Services will be hit hardest.
Prison Officers Union state chairman Matt Bindley said the Department of Corrective Services had already been the subject of funding cuts.
“Corrective Services have already had massive cuts – it lost 650 positions across the sector last year, around the same time Kirkconnell was closed,” he said.
“If conditions continue to be eroded, we’ll have officers leaving the department in droves.”
As with other state departments, Mr Bindley said morale within Corrective Services was low.
“What they [Barry O’Farrell’s Government] is suggesting is preposterous.
“How can the government continue to better their own conditions and increase their pay but cut the workers’?”
Mr Bindley said Corrective Services officers would be particularly disadvantaged by a proposal to cut back on penalty rates.
“Firies, ambulance and police work a set roster, but Corrective Services [personnel] are rostered on shifts and penalty rates come on the back of that.”
Prison Officers Vocational Branch (Bathurst) chairman Steve Jiggins said the proposed cuts would impact on members’ livelihoods.
“When people are working nine to five, that’s fine, but if you are not going to be at home with your family on weekends or at nights then there must be a monetary benefit,” Mr Jiggins said.
“That’s what they’re trying to take away from us.”
