John Welch, Secretary of the WA Prison Officers Union
We’ve visited almost a dozen MP’s so far, asking them to sign the Respect the Risk Pledge and giving them more information about: the risks Prison Officers face on the job, prison overcrowding their electorate areas, and why we believe that Prison Officers deserve a fair wage deal with no trade offs in this round of EBA negotiations.
Politicians to sign the Pledge so far – is your local MP on the list?
1. Paul Papalia – Member for Warnboro, Shadow Minister for Local Government & Corrective Services
2. Eric Ripper – Member for Belmont and Opposition Leader of the ALP
3. Janine Freeman – Member for Nollamara
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Campaign Support Grows
John Welch, Secretary of the WA Prison Officers Union
I visited a Kalgoorlie on 21 May and met with the local MP John Bowler. He was supportive of our campaign and GWN television captured his statement about totally opposed to the idea of building a private prison around the existing public prison. The proposed new prison is to hold 350 prisoners – up from the 100 inmates Eastern Goldfields Regional Prison holds.
I also visited Prison Officers at Eastern Goldfields Regional Prison in Kalgoorlie to give members an update about Respect the Risk and our EBA negotiations.
Now we’d heard that this prison has been holding up to 30 per cent more inmates than designed for in the past few months. But what we didn’t know was that the recent earthquake has caused structural damage to another eight cells which are now closed – further increasing their over crowding problem. Read more »
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