Supplements motivate protest by prison staff

Miguel Gonçalves, president of the Technical Union of the Directorate-General for Reintegration and Prison Services (SinDGRSP), who called for a strike today throughout the country, explained that the protest aims to challenge the new decree-law that reviews the career of prison service technicians.

“ This decree-law turns out to be controversial, because it talks about the unification of careers, but it ends up bringing inequalities ", explained to Lusa.

The union leader spoke to Lusa in the margins of a demonstration outside the Prison Institution of Porto, in Custoias (Council of Matosinhos), in which dozens of workers asked, in the ‘t-shirts’ and in the slogans, “justice to those who work it”.

Next, a paper coffin had printed the main objectives of the strike: “the review and appreciation of the career of technical assistant in DGRSP – special career”, the harmonisation of supplements and “the opening of external competitions for all careers”.

In Porto, where the stoppage will remain “undetermined”, the strike has “100%” membership, with a worker in minimum services, and in the country “there are places where it will walk for 70%”, and the struggle journey, the union said, has “great impact”.

The situation, also assured Miguel Gonçalves, has already motivated a meeting with the President of the Republic, António José Seguro, scheduled for Thursday, and SinDGRSP is awaiting contact by the Government with the request for a meeting already made on Friday.

“ If we had a problem with supplements so far, particularly at risk (...), from here we have another problem, which was calculated, created, invented. We do not understand this way of calculating, in which some earn 120, others earn 140, others 200 and others up to 400” euros, criticized Miguel Gonçalves.

Harmonization makes it possible to respect everyone equally, because “the bacteria do not choose workers by careers”, and the creation of a career as a technical assistant for reintegration, as a special career, has the same purpose.

“ This is a special career, which has special functions and have to be those people with specific training to do so,” he said.

Alcinda Soares, a technique of social reintegration, has worked for 32 years in DGRSP, for 10 years as a superior technique of reintegration, and is on strike “above everything for the injustice of supplements”.

“ Because here's what a life is worth. My voucher 225, that of my colleague next to me is only 140, that of a prison guard is 450. I think we all have blood and we all work with the same target audience,” Lusa said.

For this worker, the situation of careers also worries her, since after the career review, long-awaited in the profession, still lacks the status and professionals do not want to “stay another 10 years waiting for an Integrated Management and Performance Assessment System in Public Administration”.

In a situation like this, he stressed, in addition to accumulating work and economic effort, he also suffers “the one who is weaker, who in this case is the inmate”.

António Guedes also told Lusa that the “constraints” that the career published now presents motivate the strike, demanding “a strengthening of human means, by the overload” in which they are found, as well as the resolution of the situation regarding the various supplements.

“ We are grateful for the career review, but the review was done with many embarrassments. ... We're not poor and ungrateful. We are grateful, but we are still far short of what we wanted. We have not had an echo of our demands on the official roads. We are here today doing so with a loud voice”, he says.

As for external competitions, Miguel Gonçalves highlighted, if it is “truth that prison guards are missing in the establishments”, it is also true that the lack of technical assistants makes today “there are prison guards playing operator and assistants”, working “side by side in the secretaries”.