CHIEF Constables should protect warranted officers by refusing to ask for compulsory severance to be brought in.<\/p>\n
Mark Smith, Chairman of Essex Police Federation, said the National Police Chiefs\u2019 Council should stand up for officers and stand up to planned cuts to police budgets.<\/p>\n
Police chiefs are due to meet next week to discuss whether to ask for compulsory redundancy as a cost-saving measure.<\/p>\n
Mr Smith said: \u201cI don\u2019t agree that compulsory severance should be brought in. Voluntary severance is already there to be used and many forces aren\u2019t using it.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy feeling is that the police officers in Essex will be feeling let down by Chief Constables if they ask the Home Secretary for this power to be used. They need to be saying \u2018no we don\u2019t want it\u2019 because they need to stand up to these cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need to protect the officers that are working as servants of the crown.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf compulsory severance is brought in by the Home Secretary then we are moving away from being crown servants.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Smith added that any future move to make police officers redundant should be balanced out by full employment rights.<\/p>\n
However, he stressed that this was not just about the right to strike.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cA member of staff working for Essex Police is covered by a contract and is covered by employment rights \u2013 it doesn\u2019t stop them being made redundant but there are processes to protect them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no processes to protect us here. We don\u2019t have a contract, we\u2019re not covered by employment law.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf compulsory severance were to be brought in then we should be made employees \u2013 we should be given the full power and protection of being employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t only mean the right to strike \u2013 I mean contracts, employment law, the right to go to employment tribunals. Everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not about striking, because personally I don\u2019t think striking achieves anything. It\u2019s about having that protection.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CHIEF Constables should protect warranted officers by refusing to ask for compulsory severance to be brought in. Mark Smith, Chairman of Essex Police Federation, said the National Police Chiefs\u2019 Council\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1996,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2370,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions\/2370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}