Adam Harmsworth, National vice-chair Family Courts, personal capacity
Napo’s 2024 AGM showed that probation workers cannot tolerate their poverty pay and horrendous workloads any longer.
Napo, the union of probation and family courts workers, is gaining members due to a probation service in the depths of crisis. A significant layer of new members attended the AGM for the first time, with a big portion being younger workers.
The Young Members Network had its biggest fringe meeting since relaunch, with a dozen members at it. The network’s motion demanding an immediate £15-an-hour minimum wage, for all ages and rising with inflation, passed almost unanimously.
Crucially, a motion calling for a ballot to strike unless Labour “signals its immediate intent to re-enter pay talks” also flew through without a word against. Many more motions passed demanding urgent changes in how probation and Cafcass (Children and Family Courts Advisory and Support Service) are run.
Prepare for action
The new Labour government is very unlikely to come back to pay talks with a serious offer to compensate probation workers who have struggled through the botched early release of prisoners, and over a decade of austerity, unless they are under pressure. So chances are a ballot for industrial action is on the way, as general secretary Ian Lawrence acknowledged in his address to the meeting.
It is now up to the union’s leadership to build the campaign to achieve a decent turnout and raise members’ confidence in a campaign to win. There is absolutely no doubt that if the members turn out to vote, they will vote to strike. The anger and demand for change has been pent up over years.
If Napo leads its membership into the fight, it will emerge a stronger union and bring a crucial layer of activists to the fore. That has been the experience of unions such as the National Education Union that were part of the strike wave.
Fear of strikes has already led the Labour government to award public sector pay rises more than they would have otherwise. Industrial action is the only way to win the urgent change probation needs.
In our conference leaflet, Socialist Party members argued for the need for those members who want to campaign for a fighting union to get organised in a new broad left in the union. Doing that would help build the confidence of members and keep the pressure up on the leadership to build the campaign that is needed.
