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

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>