Prison Officers Association

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**POA**

Prison Officers Association
Founded	1939
Members	33,500
Country	United Kingdom
Affiliation	TUC, STUC
Key people	Brian Caton, general secretary, Colin Moses, chairman
Office location	London, England
Website	www.poauk.org.uk

The Prison Officers Association is a trade union in the United Kingdom "for prison, correctional and secure psychiatric workers." It currently has a membership of 33,500.

The roots of the POA can be traced back to the underground magazine 'Red-Un' which led the formation in 1916 of the Prison Officers Federation, which affiliated to the Labour Party.^[1] Subsequently, prison officers joined up with members of the police to form the Police and Prison Officers Union. However, following a police strike in 1919, trade unions of police and prison workers were made illegal. Bodies called Representative Boards were created, but these fulfilled only some of the functions of trade unions. They were appointed by and responsible to the Home Office, could not call a strike and were not permitted to have formal links with other labour organisations through the Trades Union Congress or Scottish Trades Union Congress.

The above situation began to change in 1938, when a group of members of Representative Boards made a formal demand to the Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, that Prison Officers should have the right to appeal to an independent Arbitration Board against employers' decisions. This demand was recognised. Then, in May 1939, the right to independent organisation was recognised. The Representative Board machinery was abolished and the Prison Officers' Association was established.

Questions were raised about the POA's status in the 1990s. In 1994, a legal decision determined that it was illegal to induce prison officers to take industrial action - a law which had applied to police officers since 1919 - meaning that the POA could not call strike action amongst its members. New labour legislation introduced by the Conservative government in 1992 laid down that the POA could no longer be a trade union. This was reversed in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994, but prison officers were still denied the right to take industrial action. This right was restored in 2004 to prison officers in the public sector in England, Wales and Scotland, but not in Northern Ireland or to prison officers in the private sector.

On the 29th August 2007, the POA started a 24 hour walkout of prisons, picketing establishments asking Prison Officers not to attend work for their shift. This was the first ever national strike action taken by the POA.^[2] The POA reported that 90% of its members (27,000) went on strike that day.

In January 2008, the Home Secretary announced that the government planned to reintroduce powers to ban strikes by Prison Officers in England and Wales.^[3] However, the Scottish Government has ruled out similar measures for Prison Officers in Scotland.^[4]