Thursday 4th March 2004
MEDIA RELEASE
ATTENTION: INDUSTRIAL/JUSTICE REPORTERS
Judge Supports Work Party Supervisors Concerns
“NUPE Work Party Supervisors in Christchurch will attend a stopwork meeting on Saturday to discuss ways to encourage
movement in their Collective Agreement talks,” Janice Gemmell, Organiser for the National Union of Public Employees said
today. Work Party Supervisors supervise offenders doing community work under the 2002 Sentencing Act (former Periodic
Detention).
“The meeting will be held at Pages Road on Saturday afternoon,” says Janice Gemmell. “The issues in dispute relate to
the allocation of permanent status for Work Party Supervisors and the allocation of the permanent hours of work.”
“Strike action was taken twice last year because the Corrections Department was trying to accommodate the low compliance
level of sentenced offenders into our Collective Employment Agreement,” says Janice Gemmell. “That issue remains as can
be seen by the comments of Judge Stephen Gerber last week. While the compliance rate has risen above 40%, the Judge has
basically taken the Department of Corrections to task for the low compliance.”
“Judges sending slack detainees to prison is a strong message to the department to come up with a plan to deal with the
poor compliance situation,” says Janice Gemmell. “Our workers now feel however they are being treated harshly because
they had the guts to raise the non-compliance issue last year.”
ENDS