The Socialist 20 October 2021

Fight for a socialist recovery

Fight for a socialist recovery

Tories to blame for GP crisis

Container delay carnage makes the case for socialist planning

Socialist nationalisation not bailouts for the bosses

Unite union policy conference

University workers ballot for strike action

Unite and fight for 30,000 permanent DWP jobs

Gwent valleys Stagecoach bus drivers strike for fair pay

Reinstate Gary Evans! Llanelli postal workers strike

Napo AGM 2021: Union placed on war footing

Scunthorpe scaffs strike for pay

People's Budgets - a socialist answer to cruel cuts

Brighton bin workers' victory in sight

Fight to defend homelessness services

Ealing People's Budget - cuts can be resisted

Northampton People's Budget - cuts and privatisation is a failed strategy

Fighting the cuts at the ballot box in Liverpool

The fall of Apartheid in South Africa

COP26: Trade unions must fight for a socialist transition to renewables

Save the planet from capitalist climate catastrophe

Austria: Chancellor Kurz resigns amid allegations of corruption

Obituary - Tony Davison: "I work for Militant, but Laing's pay my wages"

"Are you the socialist cabby?"

Housing crisis: Tories and Labour are not on our side

Liverpool arms fair: Hundreds of protesters defy police 'dispersal zone'

Hackney children's centres - more education cuts are devastating

Biggest protest yet to save Stratford Circus

Doncaster: Vigil condemns violence against women

I'm unemployed: For me vacancy crisis is a lie

TV review: Squid Game

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Napo AGM 2021: Union placed on war footing against pay freeze

Photo: Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

Adam Harmsworth, Napo NEC member (personal capacity)

"Should this engagement with the employer not result in an improved offer, formal notice of a trade dispute should be lodged and members balloted on industrial action, including strike action and action short of strike action."

These are the last words in a bold emergency motion on pay which passed nearly unanimously at the annual general meeting on 14-16 October of Napo, the union that represents probation staff.

It followed three other motions mentioning industrial action which all passed.

Napo's leaders are buoyant after the indicative ballot result - 99% rejecting the pay freeze. It was Napo's national chair Katie Lomas who proposed this motion, and beforehand general secretary Ian Lawrence expressed great confidence in beating the Trade Union Act's requirements after the ballot turnout.

In the last issue of the Socialist I said "probation workers are drawing a line". Now they have. The popular motions at AGM focused on pay, workloads, and conditions. Speeches were filled with anger at the decade of destruction of probation and family court services.

Assuming no improved pay offer will come from HM Prison and Probation Service, Napo must throw its full weight behind supporting industrial action to break the pay freeze. A cross-union campaign to build for strike action is crucial to showing this government can be beaten by the collective action of the working class.

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