The national executive council of the Prison Officers' Association (POA) is to decide on Tuesday whether to escalate the dispute with prison service management over new security measures which staff maintain will lengthen their working day. Martin Wall, Industry Correspondent, reports.
Hundreds of prison officers yesterday staged one-hour protests at prisons around the State.
Prisoners who otherwise would have been out of their cells at the time remained locked up for the duration of the protest.
The general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association, John Clinton, said that it fully supported measures announced by the Government earlier this year to have airport-style security screening put in place in prisons.
However, he said that the association objected to plans by Irish Prison Service management to have officers clock in after they underwent the security screening.
The POA said that this could take about two minutes for each person and could lead to officers having to queue to get through the security facilities.
It maintains that this could see officers having to attend for security screening on their own time or be marked late for work, even if they had arrived in time.
The director general of the Irish Prison Service, Brian Purcell, said that the dispute was unnecessary.
He said that the industrial action represented a "bad day" for the prison service.
"This arises out of security measures that we are trying to introduce in the prison system that are directly aimed at addressing critical issues that are of major concern for the safety of staff and prisoners alike," said Mr Purcell.
He said there was a fundamental principle involved that staff were not ready for duty until they had passed through screening measures.
Management was not seeking to extend the working day of prison staff, he added.
Under the terms of the national agreement Towards 2016, where disputes arose over the introduction of new measures and work practices, staff should co-operate with these pending the outcome of any third-party arbitration.
"If staff feel that they have such a strong case they should avail of such arbitration," he said.
Mr Purcell said that prison officers had accepted pay increases under the provisions of the Towards 2016 deal.
Mr Clinton said that the association had agreements with management that time recording clocks would be at the main entrance of prisons, which would enable staff to clock in for duty as soon as they entered.
"Management unilaterally decided to disregard those agreements by removing time recording clocks from the place of entry [ and placing them] in behind the staff screening search areas."
"It is unacceptable that we would be asked to support security initiatives at the expense of our own time," he said.
Mr Clinton rejected the suggestion that the Prison Officers' Association was acting outside the terms of the national agreement.
"We are always willing to sit down and talk but we are not going to go into work on our own time."