Posted By John Cook I currently work for the prison service with specific responsibility for prisoner work areas, I am also directly responsible for 9 staff. Of these 9 staff 3 of them are nominated union safety reps but they also work as a small team of three delivering industrial cleaning and laundry function. One of the members is the relief for both areas. The issue which has arisen is that one of them is insisting that they all attend the h & S committe meeting which will mean closing the laundry operation for the afternoon which obviously has an impact on the service delivery and is not acceptable. I have suggested that it would not be unreasonable to ask them to rotate their attendance at the meeting. I have said that due to operational constraints only two of them can attend the meeting, meaning the industrial cleaning party will be closed, and the laudry must remain open, which I feel is not unreasonable. There will be be attendance of reps from other areas at the meeting and the issues from these areas will be covered adequately by their own area reps as well as the full time union offical. However this one individual is claiming that this is interference with their entitlement to attend this meeting, having read the regulations I can see no reference to an entitlement to attend h & s meetings. I have fully supported their right to training and have already had two attend part 1 and 2 of the TUC run course with the third person due to attend the next part 1 course. Any thoughts or guidance would be appreciated.

Posted By Lilian McCartney Hi John, from what you have described I reckon that you have taken a reasonable decision in terms of TU Safety Reps regs. I would have thought that the full time TU person or their official would agree with this. I'mnot sure why they would have three from the one area anyway, perhaps there wasn't any other volunteers? Here we have one safety rep from each area. Lilian

Posted By garyh If you can't satisfy the individual concerned, why not invite this person to bring in their "district offical" or equivalent? Unions can be OK if you bring them in and actually ask their opinion.