Port Phillip Prison pay deal labelled a disgrace

Prison officers say their pay packets to look after some of the state’s most dangerous criminals are insulting.

Port Phillip Prison.

Officers at a major maximum security jail say a pay offer to oversee some of the state’s worst criminals is an insult.

Their union says staff at Port Phillip Prison were paid an average base rate of $77,000 a year to look after the likes of terror plot brothers Hamza and Ibrahim Abbass, reviled murderer and sex fiend Raymond “Mr Stinky” Edmunds and child killer Arthur Freeman.

There was also the presence of bikies, dangerous gangs like G-Fam and the Prisoners of War and an array of other violent criminals.

The Community and Public Sector Union has blasted a 1.85 per cent pay offer and workers last week voted it down in a near-unanimous vote.

Arthur Freeman is serving a 32 years’ jail for throwing daughter Darcey off the West Gate Bridge.

A spokesman said PPP was understaffed and workers did not receive adequate training.

The danger was underlined by numerous attacks on officers in recent years.

“They are constantly understaffed to the point that the prisoners have commented to staff that they could take it over if they wanted to,” the spokesman said.

Maximum security Port Phillip Prison, at Truganina in Melbourne’s west, is the biggest prison in the state’s corrections system.

Community and Public Sector Union members have been fighting operators G4S for 18 months for the new pay deal.

Port Phillip Prison is the state’s biggest.

CPSU secretary Karen Batt said offers of up to 2.5 per cent had already been rejected by the workers.

Ms Batt said that figure, on offer before the COVID pandemic stalled the process, had now shrunk to 1.85 per cent.

She said this was despite the Fair Work Commission recommending that the starting point when bargaining resumed should be whatever was on the table when the pandemic took hold.

“At that point, G4S was offering 2.5 per cent,” Ms Batt said.

“Now, they expect officers to accept 1.85 per cent.”

Ms Batt said G4S had refused to pass on 20 days of paid COVID leave that was given to staff in public prisons, as well as a COVID higher duties payment.

“Once our members have voted this offer down we will immediately commence the process for taking protected industrial action,” she said.

“This industrial fight to improve our life at work is about to begin.”

A G4S statement said: “We are currently negotiating in good faith with our employees on the Port Phillip Prison EA Offer.”