This is a part of No Pride in Prisons’ Abolitionist demands. These demands were originally published as a book. To see a pdf of the book, click here. To buy a copy, please email info@noprideinprisons.org.nz

All workers, including unemployed and incarcerated workers, deserve the right to create or join a union in order to advance and protect their rights.[1] Incarcerated people are one of if not the most disempowered and constrained groups in society. This makes their right to organise collectively all the more important.

Department of Corrections staff are represented by New Zealand’s largest union, the Public Service Association (PSA), which negotiates collective agreements for members, and pushes for safety measures for staff.[2] These measures are often implemented to the detriment of incarcerated people, with the introduction of access to things such as pepper spray,[3] as well as calls for prison officers to be armed with tasers, batons, and attack dogs.[4] The armament of prison officers with various weapons comes despite the number of serious assaults on prison staff falling by 75% over fifteen years.[5]

In contrast, incarcerated people are virtually powerless to advocate for higher wages for labour they are coerced into, as well as to advocate for their own safety, dignity, rights, treatment, or release. A union of incarcerated people would be able to organise against such blatant injustices as the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Act 2010, which prevents incarcerated people from voting and is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (see Demand 43).

If allowed to unionise, incarcerated people could collectively advocate for their interests. They would be able to achieve better living and working conditions, proper wages and legal employment protection, and the means to protest human rights abuses and inadequacies in the prison system. There is no more important a voice missing in the conversation about the future of the carceral system than a collective of incarcerated people themselves. Allowing for the unionisation of incarcerated workers would allow those workers to protect their most basic rights and interests. This is not an ability that should be denied to anybody, and it is for this reason that No Pride in Prisons demands that incarcerated people be granted the legal right to unionise.

[1] Matt Born, “Prisoners in Move to Set up Trade Union,” The Telegraph, 21 August 2000. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1367035/Prisoners-in-move-to-set-up-trade-union.html.

[2] Public Service Association, “What We Stand For,” Public Service Association, 7 April 2016. https://www.psa.org.nz/about-us/who-we-are/what-we-stand-for/.

[3] “All Prison Officers to Have Access to Pepper Spray,” NZ Herald, 12 June 2012. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10812501.

[4] NZPA, “Prison Attack Sparks Near-riot,” Stuff, 31 October 2010. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4292095/Prison-attack-sparks-near-riot.

[5] New Zealand Government, “Increased Safety for Prison Officers,” Scoop, 12 June 2012. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1206/S00131/increased-safety-for-prison-officers.htm.