Instructors down tools at prisons

Strikers and their supporters block the road to Mt Eden Prison yesterday. Picture / Richard Robinson

The country's overflowing prisons were hit by a new crisis yesterday when training instructors walked off the job in support of a pay claim.

About 70 instructors, who run the workshops, farms and other prisoner employment, were joined by guards to block the road into Auckland's Mt Eden Prison for about an hour yesterday. Vehicles were let through, and police ignored the protest.

Altogether, 170 instructors at the country's 19 prisons struck for 24 hours from 10am yesterday.

The instructors have not had a pay rise since they were shifted into a business unit called Corrections Inmate Employment (CIE) four years ago.

The strike came as the Corrections Department struggles to cope with a 33 per cent rise in prisoner numbers since new sentencing and parole laws were passed in 2002.

The cost of building three new prisons to accommodate the overflow blew out by $140 million in January to a new estimate of $757 million - about 1000 times the $700,000 that it would cost to give the prison instructors a 9 per cent pay rise.

Corrections Association president Beven Hanlon said the instructors were offered performance-based bonuses of up to 5 per cent above standard prison guards' pay when CIE was created, but the agency now wanted to convert the bonus into a 3 per cent increase in the base pay rates.

Rufus Kereopa, 56, a qualified painter who runs a team of 12 at Paremoremo, held a banner reading, "Would you accept a negative 2 per cent pay offer? We won't."

After 16 years at the prison, Mr Kereopa earns $45,700 a year - the middle grade which covers most CIE instructors. New officers start on $41,200, and about 5 per cent of the most senior instructors are on $50,268.

"We get no overtime rates. If we do overtime we get time off," Mr Kereopa said. "We also get jobs for inmates when they leave. You can't get every inmate work because some of them have the wrong attitude. But the ones that respond, where you know they are going to make a go of it, you do get them work."

A builder who works in a precast concrete plant at Paremoremo which employs 60 prisoners said the plant worked from 5.30am sometimes until 2am the next day during big pours.

"We are one of the biggest precast industries in Auckland, but for what they pay us they can't get staff," he said.

"The inmates are not only training in how to lay concrete. They are also learning to operate tower cranes and loading and unloading trucks and health and safety training.

"But CIE focuses more on making a profit, at the expense sometimes of training the inmates."

CIE general manager Brent Maughan said he was willing to pay more where CIE rates could be shown to be below market rates, but he believed the existing wage rates were in line with the market.


The claim

Instructors at the country's 19 prisons are seeking a 9 per cent pay rise to catch up with other prison staff. Guards have had increases of 3 per cent, 2 per cent and 2 per cent during the past three years.