As the RMT Health and Safety Conference takes place, the union is calling for urgent action on crisis of work-related stress, understaffing and the growing threat of workplace assaults. RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY explains
PRIVATISATION is bad. Chris Grayling is bad. Now-defunct Carillion was bad, but still-trading privatisation corporation Amey is also bad.
That’s the lesson of the highly critical National Audit Office report into Grayling’s prison privatisation, published this February.
The Audit Office is the government’s official spending watchdog. Its report, entitled “Improving the Prison Estate,” shows how Grayling, Carillion and Amey didn’t improve the state of prisons at all.
Our members face serious violence, crumbling workplaces and exposure to dangerous drugs — it is outrageous we still cannot legally use our industrial muscle to fight back and defend ourselves, writes STEVE GILLAN
Working in a high-risk sector, prison officers’ calls for proper PPE must be heeded – and the POA will be fighting to ensure effective protection at work is delivered, writes MARK FAIRHURST
Despite Labour’s promises to bring things ‘in-house,’ the Justice Secretary has awarded notorious outsourcing outfit Mitie a £329 million contract to run a new prison — despite its track record of abuse and neglect in its migrant facilities, reports SOLOMON HUGHES



