Thought Piece 8

I think what this thread has exposed isn’t just anger at one person or one union. It’s something deeper. It’s about probation staff feeling abandoned by EVERY layer of authority.

By management.
By policy-makers.
By inspectors.
By ministers.
And yes, by unions.

When people feel unheard and unprotected for long enough, distrust spreads everywhere. Leadership becomes a symbol for a much bigger loss of faith.

I don’t for one minute dismiss the criticism. Membership has fallen. Confidence has eroded. Some people have had poor experiences with reps. Some feel leadership hasn’t delivered. That frustration is real. But here’s the part that matters now. We have decisions coming up on pay and reform in the immediate term. Not in two years. Not after a hypothetical reset. Now.

If the argument is that the union is structurally compromised, then the obvious question is this.What is the concrete, time-bound alternative that increases leverage before the next pay round? Not a feeling. Not a verdict on personality. A plan.

Joining a different union fragments density further.
Leaving reduces bargaining weight.
Building a fourth union from scratch takes years.
Waiting for collapse is not strategy.

So what is the operational route that creates political or industrial risk in the next 6–12 months? Because power responds to risk. Risk comes from numbers, turnout and coordination. If we believe probation is pivotal to sentencing reform and prison capacity, then leverage only exists if it is organised and visible. Anger alone doesn’t create that. This isn’t about defending anyone’s salary or record. It’s about avoiding paralysis.

If leadership needs replacing, that requires members.If strategy needs rewriting, that requires mandate. If unity is the goal, it requires participation. Otherwise we stay exactly where we are which is divided, exhausted, and easier to manage than we'd like to think. I genuinely want to know what is the alternative that strengthens our hand before the next negotiation, not after it?

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1. Work your hours.

2. No overtime.
3. No late night reporting.
4. When re-allocated cases for those on sick or maternity, rack, pack and stack them. Prioritise your caseload and keep yourself sane.
5. Don’t take on SPOC roles.
6. Do everything within timescales.
7. Friday afternoon give your manager a list of the work you could not complete.
8. Remove the goodwill and let’s see how the management deal with that.
9. Everyone go on the sick and take at least six months.
10. Don’t feel guilty the management put you in this position.

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Love your thinking. However if you do this and then go off sick, you get victimised. Colleagues have gone through traumatising Performance Management processes for allegedly not being up to scratch and failing. Colleagues claimed in their defence that it was impossible to achieve all the dictates within contracted hours. Were told they just couldn't cut it. PDU heads and their deputies can be quite vindictive not realising they are not quite that clever despite it been brought to their attention regularly. Some clearly do not even know what ACAS is and what they do - God forbid. Employment Tribunal claims on their way and not done via NAPO either.

National Audit Office report late last year confirmed what we have been telling our esteemed employer all along. Mmmm... they underestimated the time things took despite us at the coalface telling them this consistently. They admitted it at the PAC hearings and then again decided to go against their own underestimation again and didn't deliberately correctly adjust the timings. Classic FU to their employees. Talk about deliberate perpetuation of Workplace Harm! Talk about government sanctioned Modern Day Slavery. They have no idea how to manage, don't care about their employees. If this was a private company the lot of them would have been given their P45s and would have walked out with a cardboard box of personal belongings, but no, they still in their positions and receiving performance bonuses. LIDL now pays more per hour for much less responsibility.

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I understand the instinct behind some of these suggestions. People are exhausted. They feel unheard. They feel cornered. But there’s a difference between withdrawing goodwill and detonating your own position.

Work to contract? Yes.
Stop unpaid overtime? Yes.
Document what can’t be completed? Absolutely.

That’s not rebellion. That’s professionalism. Mass resignations, coordinated sickness or banking on tribunals as a system reset isn’t strategy. It’s a series of individual risks in a system that has repeatedly shown it will protect itself first.

If this thread shows anything, it’s not laziness or cowardice. It’s something more serious, people don’t trust any layer of authority to protect them anymore. Not management. Not leadership. Not unions. That level of mistrust is dangerous in a public protection service. But fragmentation and individual legal battles won’t fix that mistrust. They confirm it.

If probation is genuinely pivotal to sentencing reform and prison capacity (and it is ) then leverage has to be credible, coordinated and collective. Not reactive. Boundaries are strength. Organisation is strength.Burning out one colleague at a time is not. If senior leaders are reading this, the message isn’t that staff want chaos. It’s that they feel abandoned. And that’s a far bigger warning sign.