Prison staff waiting for pay offer

Prison instructors are waiting for a pay offer from the Department of Corrections today after some workers were suspended yesterday.

Staff who work as Corrections Inmate Employment (CIE) instructors yesterday started industrial action by refusing to complete some paper work.

The prison officers' union, the Corrections Association of New Zealand (Canz), said the Department of Corrections suspended about 160 workers when they took the action, but the department put the number of staff involved in the action at 135.

Yesterday Department of Corrections CIE manager Brent Maughan said some progress had been made in mediation and the department had undertaken to provide a formal offer to staff today in order to settle a short term collective contract to June 30, 2006.

But this morning Canz President Beven Hanlon said he had heard nothing, even though the department was supposed to have contacted him during the weekend to arrange meetings for today.

The suspended staff remained off the job and were not interested in going back. Members were saying they did not want to return to work until an offer was made to them, Mr Hanlon said.

"It's only paper work they've stopped doing. They were still going to take the inmates out, they were still going to call in their musters ...They're still responsible for everyone, they're still doing all of their job, they just weren't signing a few pieces of paper work."

He also took issue with Mr Maughan's comments that the workers taking the industrial action received "fair market rates".

Eight staff who did not belong to the union had received rises of 8 per cent, while staff represented by the union had not received a wage increase since CIE was set up in 2001.

"It's a bit rich for them to say market rates, because there's eight people doing exactly the same job in the same market earning 8 per cent more," Mr Hanlon said.

"Our staff probably would have rolled over the contract again, like they did previously, if they hadn't found out all the managers had received pay rises and eight staff had received pay rises."

There was a possibility of industrial action being taken by other staff in the Corrections Department.

Canz had just initiated bargaining at the Auckland Central Remand Prison, and at any stage staff there could walk off the job on strike in support of their terms and conditions, he said.

In July, 2200 corrections officers could take industrial action as well if there were no progress on their negotiations and the department was still "mucking around" their CIE colleagues.

No response was immediately available from the Corrections Department this morning.

- NZPA