Forgive my lack of working class solidarity, but for me probation officers are pratically in the same class as cops. Unless where you live probation officers are nice, friendly, helpful people and not pricks who issue warrants for your arrest once you miss a meeting.
Probation officers might strike
laureakai wrote:
Forgive my lack of working class solidarity, but for me probation officers are pratically in the same class as cops. Unless where you live probation officers are nice, friendly, helpful people and not pricks who issue warrants for your arrest once you miss a meeting.
The aim of this thread was to highlight that yet another group of workers in a repressive, anti-working class industry with a history not striking looks like it might be taking strike action in the nearish future. I left the 'just as bad as cops and prison officers' bit out to see if that'd be the only thing anyone mentioned, looks like I was right. It seems like if you mention a strike by any group of workers with contradictory or negative role, everyone's more interested in saying how much they hate the police and friends (because of course no many people hate the police on libcom so this needs to emphasised over and over again) than what it means for these reactionary groups of workers to be going out on strike. Note that this had no mention of expressing or asking for any kind of solidarity with them at all.
On a similar note, there's a joint POA (Prison Officers Association), NAPO (National Association of Prison Officers) and PCS (mainly civil servants, includes courts service workers and others I think) are having a joint rally outside Westminster next week, although it looks like a small union brass one. I don't think it's particularly positive in any way (although neither is it 'bad', until you have screws and cops marching on demos with other groups of workers in the same pay dispute then presumably arresting them if anything gets out of hand, can't see it getting anywhere near that point, and that's more about the unions being shit in general than police/screw strikes in particular), but it's unusual enough to be worthy of discussion.
I agree with you laureaki. I cannot find any reason to be enthusiastic about industrial action by probation officers, unless it means that for the period they are on strike they won't be tagging people having them arrested and blathering about equal opportunities and anti- racism while doing all thes things. What pisses me off about these caring Guardian -reading wankers is that they do not seem to realise their objectively repressive role. Are they striking for more control more supervisory powers or what? At least cops and prison officers are honest.
It'd be one thing if parole officers were like public defenders; in an adversarial role in relation to the prison bureaucracy. They're not, however. They're not their to argue for you, or to defend your interests in anyway. They're mostly there to bust your ass, and make sure to catch you when you slip up, no matter how small. There many workers who work in public service or government roles that are not intrinsically against the working class, but I can't imagine theres a branch of "law and order" that isn't against everything we stand for.
catch wrote:
laureakai wrote:
Forgive my lack of working class solidarity, but for me probation officers are pratically in the same class as cops. Unless where you live probation officers are nice, friendly, helpful people and not pricks who issue warrants for your arrest once you miss a meeting.The aim of this thread was to highlight that yet another group of workers in a repressive, anti-working class industry with a history not striking looks like it might be taking strike action in the nearish future. I left the 'just as bad as cops and prison officers' bit out to see if that'd be the only thing anyone mentioned, looks like I was right. It seems like if you mention a strike by any group of workers with contradictory or negative role, everyone's more interested in saying how much they hate the police and friends (because of course no many people hate the police on libcom so this needs to emphasised over and over again) than what it means for these reactionary groups of workers to be going out on strike. Note that this had no mention of expressing or asking for any kind of solidarity with them at all.
One of my friends in the IWW tried to organize the police recently...he was actually making progress until one of them figured out who the IWW actually were, and then for some reason, who knows why, they stopped returning his calls.
94% in favour of strike action over 2.5% pay deal, first industrial action by probation officers in 20 years if it goes ahead etc. etc.
National Association of Probation Officers says:
Which means it's unlikely to ever get to a strike I assume.
http://www.24dash.com/news/Communities/2008-06-02-Probation-officers-vote-in-favour-of-strike-action