Striking Prison Officers have been told by the courts that they're not allowed to strike over pay, which according to the report, starts at £17.7K PA.

You've got to way up their right to strike against the 'rights' of the inmates, who despite in prison for a reason, still have an accordance of 'liberty', but now find themselves under lockdown.

Something tells me the inmates won't find any sympathy with this cause!

I would have done.


I'd have told their union rep they had to release me from jail for forcing me to cross a picket line. The bastards.

1. They don't necessarily want sympathy - they want a pay rise.

2. Every time workers in the public sector take industrial action, they are accused of offending the rights of others. In fact, every time workers of any description take industrial action, they are accused of hurting others etc. What else can they do? The courts and the bosses have to be made to understand.

3. I don't believe that prison officers, given the job they do, have not considered the repercussions of taking industrial action.

I still find it incredible that you can make it illegal to take away someones right to withdraw their labour.
How can that really possible?!

Didn't someone sing a song about that many years ago ?? Which side are you on ?

I don't. It's the only thing effective instrument that workers have because it hits capital right where it hurts - in the wallet.

Indeed we're frowned upon for withdrawing our labour but it's perfectly legal for capitalists to close industries down and move jobs out to foreign lands to make x amount of millions instead of y.

It's common in the US. Teachers cannot strike, when you read of an american teachers strike, they are risking huge fines AND imprisonment. Operators and Engineeers Union (they maintain the buildings, the heating and cooling units) cannot strike. Police and Fire Department members cannot strike.

On top of that ugliness, more and more contracts contain picket-line crossing language. For instance, the Teamstes in the US keep signing contracts that allow them to keep working if other workplace unions strike. In San Jose California, they just signed one that keeps them working through a picket line of printers and journalists. Disgusting.

I wish I believed the strike was an effective weapon. It isn't, not in my country anyway. The corporations have cut off all effective forms of strike action and it's very difficult to find people brave enough to break the law. It's heartbreaking. It's why I feel it's so important to support strikes when you see them. There is so much at stake.

I wouldn't assume that the POA are quite the same in their outlook as the RCN, NUT, Unison et cetera.

Absolutely. For that reason, and the ones mentioned by Barb, it's crucial to support workers who take action. I know that prison officers are not the same as many other workers but even they can be politicised.

Yes, you're right, of course.
But the POA have never been 'unpoliticised'; still maybe things are changing.

And of course the politicising may not be a very progressive kind. It would, I imagine, take a particular mind set to work as a prison guard.

A friend of mine works in a local prison and he reckons it's not the best job he's ever had, the money's not too clever either but he reckons it's the most stable job he's had, and they're not too likely to relocate the prison the Mumbai!

It's a worrying trend that workers rights don't amount to much and the that strikes in the US are illegal - how soon before we follow the Americans with that idea - (Britain & Australia following America, who have thought!) - and the threat of jobs being taken and moved off-shore is just another nail in the coffin.

A guy at work said to me that he could defend globalisation by saying that us moving jobs out to the other end of the globe was a way of making them work out of their state of poverty and join the global market. I assumed he meant the poverty inflicted on most of these nations due to imperialist rule.

I worry about the future of this country too. It's a generalisation I know but I don't gage a lot of sympathy from people regarding potential or ongoing strikes, or at least people are quite hypocritical of strikes, most people seem to 'support' a strike unless it's within the public sector and it affects them personally.

"The PA railroad began slashing wages, first 10 percent at the start of the year, then another 10 percent in June. They laid off workers, cut wages, and then announced they would increase their eastbound trains to Pittsburgh without hiring more crew. Furious workers took control of the switches and blocked the trains, igniting the spark. Around the same time, the Baltimore & Ohio cut wages, and reduced work weeks. On July 16, Brakemen and Fireman stopped working. The bosses attempted to hire scabs but the strikers blocked train movements in all directions. Word traveled fast through to Virginia where strikes also erupted. Trains stopped moving, and the bosses pleaded with the Governor to call in the militia. There was a battle between the strikers and the militia, but the strength and solidarity of the workers pushed back the militia, leaving the railroads to the workers, who were winning more and more support. The Governor then begged President Hayes for federal troops, which were quickly granted. The troops arrived in Martinsburg, VA heavily armed with rifles and gattling guns, and succeeded in breaking the strikes and getting the trains moving again. But this was just a small victory for the ruling class, for the strike had just begun! The strike-breakers could not extinguish the flames of revolt - when one battle was won, another popped up; they couldn’t keep up with the working classs determination." (Josh Shelton writing about the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.)

Those were the days. But work isn't organised like that any more. You've got to hand it to Capital, they do try very hard to break working class resistance. And let's not forget that the great Winston Churchill (spits) sent troops to Tonypandy to overcome striking miners. (Why they consented to go and attack their own class is another question.) As someone's already said, Capital will sack workers when the going gets tough so they can maintain their profits but will deny any labour rights to the proletariat. They are also prepared to kill them if they get too uppity. Hardly surprising then that jobs get shifted to parts of the globe where labour is cheap. The complication of course is that they have to maintain markets: not much point in making a car in the Far East if there's nobody to buy it. That simply creates a crisis of production.

Hang on, didn't someone write about all this in the 19th century? What was his name .....? Charles something or other. Oh no. I've got it now - Karl Marx, that's the chap.