Northern Region Update.
18.03.2008
For the last couple of months CANZ have been having regional meetings.
These meetings are with the Regional manager, the Site managers of this region
and your CANZ National Executive members and local CANZ site chair people.
These meetings are an opportunity to get your issues sorted in a
reasonable time. With regular meetings, we are able to keep on top of any small
issues that might develop.
Here are the things we talked about recently.
WDP Reviews of all prisons
CANZ have been asking for a review of WDP for many years. Warren Cummins
has taken this up nationally and will form part of the discussion with CANZ
national officers on April 21 in
The hope we have is that we get this review and increase staffing in
places like West division. Which I believe is the most under resourced units in
the country. It is a credit to the staff that work there that more incidents
don’t happen.
ARWCF start a WDP review (Post Implementation Team) in the next two
weeks. CANZ are requesting that we are allowed to be part of this review.
Unplanned absence Policy
These dates nominated:
Mt Eden 1030 Fridays ACRP
1000 Fridays
So if you do not have staff replaced in your units, you should be
refusing to unlock, asking why they are and how you are going to reduce your
workload and then notifying your CANZ delegate.
CANZ design reference
committee for the new combined prison
Warren Cummins has followed up CANZ request for a board of front-line
corrections officers to vet various design options in the new prison plans:
such things as flow, sight lines, officer facilities, health & safety and
practical security, etc. This will be discussed with Mark Ware on April
21.
Union Delegate “Reasonable
Time”
CANZ requested that for one day a month, the CANZ site chairperson is
able to get around the prison and talk to the members and attempt to sort
issues before they develop.
Unfortunately this was turned down by the Regional Manager as consuming
too much resource. This is a shame and shows at this stage little support
for working together.
This is agreed to at many other institutions, so we know it can be done.
We will continue to try for this as we believe that is a great way to resolve issues
before they become problems.
CANZ participation in other
Regional Management Committees
CANZ have asked if we can be involved in these meetings and we are told
that delegate participation on the Regional Health & Safety Committee and
the Regional Ethical Committee can be effected by a nomination at your prison.
So if interested, please contact your local chair person.
New Officer Training
CANZ submission to consultants that new officers should not be rotated
until they had got a good grounding in one place was supported by Kelly P who
stated that MEP had an agreement with CANZ that no new officer would be rotated
within their first six months.
These meetings will be happening every 2 months. If you would like to
have an issue raised at these meetings you need to raise them with your unit
delegate and she/he will take them to the monthly branch meeting and then on
from there.
I am hoping that these regular monthly meetings that happen at your sites
will be followed with a regular monthly update from each site branch. If you
are interested in helping your local branch just contact me and I will put you
in contact with the people you need to know.
Stay safe and have a good weekend.
Beven Hanlon
CANZ President