According to data published on the BBC site, these are the average salaries for prison officers.
The results of the 2006 ASHE show that median weekly pay for full-time employees in the UK grew by 3.7 per cent in April 2006 to reach £447. Median earnings of full-time male employees was £487 per week in April 2006; for women the median was £387
Source: Source: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings
I wouldn’t say working in a prison will be one of my top choices when it comes to find a place to work. Neither that I would say that it’s a job that people should not feel like taking; but it is a tough one and for what I can read it’s not the best paid job in the U.K.
Beyond the ideas people might have about what officers do and how they do their job, the truth is that they have to deal with criminals whom, perhaps, are mostly not necessarily dangerous, but thinking of the way we criminalise everything nowadays, I am sure that overcrowded prisons won’t help to carry a job that must create high levels of stress.
How do we quantify how much should the government pay for that stress is a question that I am not willing to answer, but surely money must balance the needs for an appropriate job environment and quality of life.
I don’t normally support wild strikes that cause more disruption to the general public than to the company or government that unions try to negotiate with. But I did feel some sympathy for yesterday action. Mostly because I felt they had not much room to manoeuvre.
I guess the bottom line is, once again, not just about wages and work conditions but also about Home politics policies that focus more on get more people in prison rather than tackling the causes of their behaviour.
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