POVB Executive’s response to VOR changes

The Prison Officers Vocational Branch (POVB) State Executive categorically rejects the proposed rescission of Assistant Commissioner Memorandum 2022/17 Filling Daily Roster Vacancies and Variable Operating Routines in Dillwynia and Macquarie Correctional Centres.

POVB members have already been subjected to sustained and repeated resourcing reforms, including Benchmarking, PBCAP and now PBEP. Each of these has stripped posts, reduced staffing numbers and hollowed out operational capability across correctional centres. When benchmarking was imposed, members were assured it would “maintain safety and security while improving efficiency and effectiveness”, while operating at staffing levels identified as the minimum safe requirement.

Those assurances have failed.

In good faith, centres have repeatedly bent these arrangements to keep gaols functioning, despite chronic staffing deficits. This has occurred in the context of officer burnout, excessive and unsustainable overtime, the inability to fill overtime vacancies, high workers compensation claims, persistent unfilled FTE positions and elevated sick leave caused directly by workload pressures.

The two cornerstones of benchmarking, resourcing and performance targets, have been systematically eroded and are now operationally and industrially unsustainable.

Since benchmarking was introduced:

• Staff assaults have increased by 46 per cent
• Use-of-force incidents have increased by 110 per cent
• Inmate self-harm has increased by 47 per cent
• Inmate lock-ins have increased by 56 per cent
• These are not abstract figures.

They represent an unmistakable and ongoing deterioration in safety, security and wellbeing.

The corrective services system is already beyond its limits.

Despite this reality, the Department is pushing for Governors and Managers of Security to be given broader discretion to alter routines without filling daily roster vacancies.

The POVB does not accept this premise. Normalising the failure to fill vacancies will manufacture unsafe workplaces, expose members and inmates to unacceptable risk and further degrade already fragile operations across Corrective Services NSW.

The State Executive accepts that on occasion, despite all reasonable and genuine efforts, it may be impossible to fill certain posts. However, we do not and will not accept the deliberate or systemic decision to run short, nor the institutionalisation of understaffing, at the direct expense of staff safety.

Moreover, the NSW Government’s priority of reducing reoffending, through increased time out of cell and participation in programs, education and rehabilitation, is irreconcilable with a Variable Operating Routine model and any reduction in the obligation to fill vacancies.

These objectives cannot be achieved without adequate staffing.

The POVB does not support any initiative that further compromises safety, entrenches understaffing or shifts risk onto our members under the guise of flexibility.

Accordingly, the POVB State Executive directs all Sub Branch Delegates to convene a meeting of members to examine the proposed trial, assess the local impacts and formally report on the risks this model presents should it be implemented across the system.