Kylie Muscat, a United Voice union delegate, was suspended last week just hours after her comments about staff safety in the wake of an assault were published by Fairfax Media.

As of Wednesday night, a United Voice Change.org petition calling for her to be reinstated had attracted more than 1300 signatures.

Due to ongoing legal proceedings, Ms Muscat was advised not to speak to media, but United Voice prisons co-ordinator Michael Clifford said he hoped for a positive response from the operators of Arthur Gorrie, GEO.

“We have to see how the legal process goes, but our view is very strongly that as a union delegate, Kylie has a right to speak up about safety issues,” he said.

Mr Clifford said union delegates had met with Arthur Gorrie management to address staffing concerns on Friday.

“There has been some movement in putting at least one additional staff member on in an area we said required it and some efforts to plug other understaffing gaps and that’s probably as strong as I can put it at this stage,” he said.

“We are working with management to try to address those staffing concerns and we’re glad to see they are moving on their concerns.

“We hope that we can adopt the same approach when we see them in the Fair Work Commission and get a fairly sensible resolution to the issue involving Kylie, which would include a recognition that she has a right to speak out about these sorts of issues.”

Mr Clifford said every time the petition was signed, an email was sent to the prison’s general manager, Troy Ittensohn.

A GEO spokesman said virus protection had stopped many of the messages getting through to Mr Ittenshohn.

“As at 4pm (on Wednesday) the count was 373 with many coming from same sender,” he said.

No further comment from GEO was provided.