PROBATION officers and solicitors across England and Wales walked out on a 36-hour strike at noon yesterday and they are staying out until midnight tonight.
NAPO, union for Probation and Family Court staff, is fighting the privatisation of 70% of the probation service, while The Justice Alliance, representing solicitors and law firms across the country, is fighting the government’s cuts to legal aid.
At a joint picket of the Westminster Magistrates Court yesterday, Ian Lawrence, General Secretary of NAPO, when asked about stopping the privatisation of the service, said: ‘Well, it’s a tough task and that is why we have been campaigning for the last 18 months, as soon as we heard that Grayling wanted to privatise the Probation Service, destroy a gold standard award winning service, that has decreased re offending. . . and is now faced with private providers coming in.
‘Our objective now, from the strike onwards, is to prevent the sale of these 21 contracts and packages to the private sector. Chris Grayling and Jeremy Wright (Tory ministers) have this ideological idea that they are going to solve reoffending at a stroke.
‘What they haven’t done is come clean to the taxpayer and, more importantly, on the risk to community safety. They are putting offender management into the hands of unproven cowboys like Sodexo and Carillion and it is going to cause chaos.
‘Today we have got the solicitors and ourselves taking quite historic joint action together and tomorrow there will be a rally at 2pm in Central London outside the House of Commons.’
Anetta Yaggar, Probation Officer, said on the picket line yesterday: ‘The probation service has existed for more than 100 years now, and within two years, Chris Grayling, the Minister for Justice, is trying to destroy the service and it will put the public at risk.’
Anetta, who works with student probation officers all over London, continued: ‘Particularly, we’re concerned at the very speedy way he is going about making major changes. He is introducing private companies to provide the service who will have profit as a motive, rather than we, the probation services, who are there to try and achieve change and are not for profit.’
Asked about general strike action from the TUC, Anetta said: ‘I think it is rather strange that when we had the Poll Tax riots under Mrs Thatcher a lot of people galvanised and got together to fight the government action.
‘But on this occasion, it is not happening. I do often wonder why that is because it’s only by standing together that we can achieve some change. I think personally I would very much like to see a general strike so the people as a whole can stand up against what is being done in our name.’
Beverley Smith, a probation officer, told News Line: ‘We have had to take strike action, because we are really passionate about what we do.
‘If the private companies take over our work, it is going to change for the worse, and people aren’t going to get the help that they really need.’
