Summary of the editorial from IDS Pay Report 985, September 2007

A testing time for public sector pay bargaining institutions

The end of the summer, normally a quiet time for industrial relations, has seen two major disputes, one on London’s underground rail network, involving maintenance workers represented by the RMT union, and the other a nationwide, unofficial walkout by the Prison Officers’ Association, over pay. The RMT’s strike was announced in advance. However the prison officers’ action was totally unheralded. And though this walkout was perhaps less disruptive to the public, it was in some ways even more surprising, conducted as it was by members of a union that has not been widely associated with industrial action, or opposition to Government policy, unlike the RMT. So how did it come about?

The key element in the background is the Government’s policy on public sector pay, which seeks to maintain pay rises in line with its CPI inflation target of 2 per cent. The other factor is that prison officers, as a group, were recently awarded review body status. They were persuaded to give up their negotiating rights in return for the replacement of the legal ban on prison officers taking strike action with a voluntary no-strike agreement. In 1994 the then Conservative Government had banned prison officers from taking industrial action. In 2001 however, a voluntary no-strike agreement was reached between the Prison Service and the POA, which also established an independent Prison Service Review Body (PSRB). Two years later, in June 2003, the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, announced he was repealing the law banning prison staff from going on strike.

In some ways, the first pay award under the new review body set the scene for later settlements. The PSRB recommended increases of 6 per cent, to cover the 15-month period from 1 January 2002 to 1 April 2003. The size of the increase reflected a significant ‘catch-up’ element, with both inflation and average earnings. But the Government decided to stage the award, paying 3.5 per cent from 1 January 2002, and the remaining 2.5 per cent from 1 January 2003.

... the full editorial can be read in IDS Pay Report 985