Information Sessions Scheduled

As you may be aware, we have run into a significant difficulty in the implementation of the recent Local 480 Agreement. At issue is a difference of interpretation with respect to the implementation date of the new Civil Service classification of Correction Officer, which merges the two previous classifications of Correctional Officer and Correctional Worker into one classification of Correction Officer.

The employer has taken the position the transition will not take place until April 1, 2010 rather than November 1, 2009, which would reduce the retroactivity otherwise payable to Correctional Officers.

Your Bargaining Committee and your Board of Directors would like to meet with you to discuss this issue further and hear from you. We have decided at this time to suspend participation in all committees except Occupational Health & Safety Committees until this situation is resolved.

We have scheduled information sessions as follows and encourage you to attend one near you:

• All of the information sessions are from 6-8pm
• Thursday, January 19 - Antigonish Correctional Facility
• Friday, January 20 - NSGEU Cape Breton Office - 850 Grand Lake Rd., Grand Lake Firehall, Second Floor, Suite 14, Sydney
• Monday, January 23 - NSGEU Yarmouth Office - 56 Hawthorne St.
• Tuesday, January 24 - NSGEU Head Office in Dartmouth - 100 Eileen Stubbs Ave
• Wednesday, January 25 - Amherst - Wandlyn Amherst, Cumberland 2 Room (back of the hotel)

Thank you and we hope to see you there.

Local 480 Bargaining Committee Reaches Tentative Agreement; Information and Voting Sessions Scheduled For All Facilities

After long and difficult negotiations, your Bargaining Committee is pleased to announce that it has reached a tentative agreement with the employer.

Please attend one of the following sessions to hear about the details of the agreement and vote on it.

Please note that your only chance to vote on this tentative agreement will be at one of the following meetings:

• Antigonish: Monday, Oct. 24 from 4 pm to 6:30 pm
• Cumberland: Tuesday, Oct. 25 from 5:30 pm to 8 pm
• Central Nova: Wednesday, Oct. 26 from 5:30 pm to 8 pm
• Southwest Nova: Thursday, Oct. 27 from 5:30 pm to 8 pm
• Cape Breton: Friday, Oct. 28 from 5:30 pm to 8 pm

Please make every effort to attend the meeting at your facility. Your Bargaining Committee looks forward to seeing you, and will answer any questions you may have.

Actions of Correctional Officers at Central Nova not under review; Minister stands by 'outstanding' work

There has been some confusing information about the incident at the Central Nova Correctional Facility in Burnside on May 11 in which an inmate was critically injured by another inmate.

The Herald has reported the incident in a way that makes it seem the actions of the correctional officers are being reviewed. This is not the case as far as we are aware.

The NSGEU's Communications Officer has registered our complaint with the media on this issue. For clarity: it is the policies and procedures that are being reviewed, not the actions of the Corrections Officers. As your union, we will and have taken issue with the government when needed to improve your working conditions. However, in this case, Minister Landry has been supportive of the members and we wanted to acknowledge this.

The Minister had this to say about the incident in the Legislature:

HON. ROSS LANDRY: Mr. Speaker, thank you for that question. The first thing that the correctional staff have to do, in incidents where there’s an altercation or where there's an injury that occurs, is to secure medical attention. That was done promptly. The second thing they need to do is to secure the facility and the inmates in there and ensure that the staff is safe. That was done. The third thing they need to do in sequence is to secure any evidence that might be there, if they're aware that an altercation may have occurred. That was done. The next step that was taken is the overall security of the facility and then contact the police and that was done.

MR. LANDRY: Mr. Speaker, the situation at hand is that I'm very confident the staff followed good procedure and secured the evidence. I think one of the key points that the honourable member mentioned was that there was no contamination of the evidence and that the staff actually did a very professional job. I compliment the correctional officers in the way that they handled that. On the issue of the time, I've asked for a review and I'm seeking information as to the sequence of events that occurred that evening to get that information back. A second thing that I've already put into the process is that I've asked my administrators to do a review of policies and practices in the past, to develop a policy or protocol in dealing with the phoning of police in that sequence. That's a gap that was in the system, that there is no policy there, but this government and this minister will have it in place shortly.

MR. LANDRY: I guess I'll have to go over the answer again because I thought I was clear and I do apologize for not being clear. The procedure here that was done - and I want to compliment the correctional officers on an outstanding job that they did in, first off, dealing with the medical safety of the individual; that's paramount. The second thing that is important is the overall safety of the facility; that was done. The third thing was the security of evidence and, as in the honourable member's own words, that was done appropriately.