Ballot On Industrial Rights A Case Of ‘When, Not If’

IT is a case of when, not if, Federation members have a ballot on industrial rights, the Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

Public-sector workers including doctors, nurses and teachers have been striking as part of their fight for better pay and conditions, but police officers, as Crown servants, do not have the same industrial rights.

South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said that the time had “absolutely” come to ask officers if they wanted industrial rights.

He said: “It’s a case of when, not if, we need to ask that question. The officers in our force have made it clear to me over the past couple of years that we should be looking at this question, and as a Federation branch, we’ve been at the forefront of this.

“We asked the question a year ago and didn’t have that much widespread support, whereas now I think we’ve been at the spearhead of pushing this nationally, and I’m really glad that a lot of other Federations are coming on board with it.

“The simple fact is: we’ve got to listen to our officers and what they want, and they want this question to be asked.”

Steve said that, for him, the ballot would depend on the pay deal the Government offers officers this year.

He continued: “If the pay deal isn’t satisfactory, we need to be ready to start coming out to the public and our members to say, ‘We’re going to start exploring these rights’.

“We need to be doing the work in the background to get that ready. Obviously if we get a pay deal that our officers think is acceptable, then it may be that we put it on hold until a time when we think we need to do it.

“There is traction now within this region and nationally it seems that the majority of the forces are talking about it. What I don’t want to do is for this to go away. It needs to be dealt with, one way or another. And if we don’t get a satisfactory pay rise, we’re to crack on with it this year – that’s what our members keep telling us.”