Probation staff back strike action over pay and mounting workloads

Probation and family-court staff represented by Napo have voted for strikes and other industrial action in a dispute over pay and workloads. The union says it is preparing possible walkouts at a later stage. A vote to authorise strikes does not mean a nationwide stoppage has already begun, and no strike dates were specified in the announcement.

The ballot covered two linked issues. On pay,85% of voting members supported action short of a strike and 74% supported strike action. On workloads,87% backed action short of a strike and 75% backed walkouts. Those percentages describe the votes in the respective ballots, not the proportion of every employee in the service.

Napo said it called the ballot after an inadequate 5% pay offer and a failure to agree practical measures to reduce excessive work. General secretary Ian Lawrence said members wanted to recover ground lost in comparison with other staff in His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service. He also said the result reflected serious anger about a workload crisis that preceded the government's latest prisoner early-release scheme.

The union argues that early releases, introduced to ease overcrowded prisons, have added to existing probation pressures. Lawrence said staff had tried to meet demands made by successive governments despite inadequate staffing and a shortage of community resources for rehabilitation. These are the union's assessments of the pressures on the service, rather than findings from a new independent inspection.

Napo says wages have stagnated since 2010 and that reception staff receive salaries only slightly above the minimum wage. It also says members work thousands of unpaid overtime hours to keep up. The immediate next step is the union's decision about the form and timing of action, alongside the dispute over an acceptable pay settlement and measures to address staffing and caseloads.