Prison Strike

I've been reading on the news website some reports about this week's 'strike' of prison officers in the UK. Readers outside Britain probably don't know but on Wednesday their trade union - the 'Prison Officers Association' - called a lightning strke early in the morning. A few hours later after much legal action by the government and various decisions by judges they were reluctantly sent back to work but there will surely be more trouble soon.

The basis of the strike seems to be that the government didn't fully accept an arbitration award and tried to 'stage' the increased payments over twelve months. In theory it is illegal for prison officers to strike - but then in theory the government should have paid the arbitrated sum awarded too. There is a lot of 'dialogue of the deaf' stuff in progress and everyone believes that they are 'fully justified' in what they do. And behind the prison officers come many other public service groups with pay demands this autumn - including the police.

It suprises me that the government have got away with this kind of trick so easily in the past. They won't in future. You can declare something as 'illegal' as you like but 'when push comes to shove' and people don't report to work what are you going to do? Send the soon-to-be-negotiated-with police around to their houses to 'make them'? In the end you can only govern by consent. In several prisons this time even the prisoners applauded the staff and shook their hands when they came back to work.

Setting pay rates always strikes me as a very complex business. It is difficult enough in companies where there is an identifiable pot of money to argue over, let alone public services. And sadly people have had the example of senior managers awarding themsleves huge pay increases and bonuses under the pretense that they 'deserve the going rate' and all that guff. People learn by example and who can blame them? "Do as I say and not as I do" is a strategy you have to be pretty dumb to accept these days.