Apparently so is the OP! :eek:
But I’ve heard this too, and the stuff I’ve heard is that the firefighters were offered an 11% raise, got huffy and said that 11% was an insult, demanded 40% and walked.
Given that I’m lucky to get a 4% raise, my sympathies are not with them.
And I hope that whoever fires the sorry lot of 'em and hires some new people with some perspective
Fenris
Fenris dear heart. A fully trained fireman earns £21,000 pa (Around 30,000 of your American dollars). How does this compare with the pay of a US fireman? (I’m interested).
All I know is I work in the British public sector, with all the benefits that accrue there, and I earn a hell of a lot more than a fireman for a 9-5 unqualified job, that just happens to have a private sector comparitor arrangement. I’ve never had to go into a burning building either.
Give 'em what they want; £30, 000 pa. They’re worth it.
There main complaint is that because they’ve not kicked up a huge fuss and not threatened any strike action for 25 years or so. They’ve fallen massivly behind the pay of comparable emergency workers.The police, ambulance drivers etc. The average pay of a Fireman is 20,000 pounds which is what 28-30,000 dollars? They’re looking for about 30,000 pounds per year as a salary.Which doesn’t sound unreasonable to me for some one who is expected to rush into a burning building.
Anyone know what a United States Fireman earns?
Damn beaten to it.
According to the US Dept. of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics 2001 National Compensation Survey, nationwide mean hourly earnings for full time firefighters is US$ 17.22 (relative error 2.8%), for a mean week of 48.1 hours. So we can figure a mean yearly salary of something over US$ 40,000, or about 25,000+ British pounds.
Actually, if you look in a different area of the website, they break it down slightly lower on a national average. This page gives a national median of $34,000, with a 75th percentile of $45,000. The mean hourly wage listed is $16.95 (based on 40 hour work week?).
'Zat help any?
Goddamit, I submitted that OP* twice*, and neither of them made it? Hamster must have set the wheel on fire . . . Anyway, the site I saw said they are now making about $32,000 (not much, I’ll admit, for the job) and want an increase to $45,000. I don’t know if that’s pounds or dollars.
I’ve no idea how reliable a source it is, but this website lists the average pay for a New York firefighter to be $30,872 and around $40,000 in Los Angeles.
I don’t know how useful a comparison this is since I don’t know how comparable the cost of living is between the UK and the US (especially as generalising is bad; London firefighters will need a lot more to afford London accommodation than those in suburban areas, for example).
The army is supplying emergency firefighters in vintage “Green Goddess” army fire engines. These are not equipped with breathing apparatus and are prone to nasty road accidents, so I’ve heard. It’s a bad state of affairs; on the one hand I do believe firefighters deserve to earn more - on the other hand I think their demands are too much and would open the floodgates for crippling strikes in every part of the public sector. The government has convened its most serious national crisis committee, but Blair et al have maintained a comparatively low profile. Guess it lacks the glamour of a war with Saddam, eh Tony?
I work for the Royal Berkshire Ambulance Service - paramedics earn £30,000 but non-emergency drivers earn less than £13,000. They’re appallingly badly paid. I’m the person that tells the ambulance drivers where to go and when and I get paid more than they do. Of course, we can’t go on strike - no Green Goddess to back us up, unfortunately.
I support the firefighters in their strike - they deserve more pay and surely everyone knows that the 40% figure is an OTT bid in the hope that they might get something reasonable?
The real problem here is not actually the idea that £21k is too low.
In most of the UK that would be considered a good wage, but the snag is that London and its surrounds are very expensive places to try put down roots.
This means that either the firefighters have to live a long way off, or pay a fortune in commuting costs, drive a long way on horrendously congested roads, or live away from home during their schedule shift roster.
This is a problem common to very many public sector workers, each group has its own pay negotiating body, and these seek pay rises nationally.
There are extra living allowances for being in the London belt, but they don’t really make enough differance.
The main difficulty with having regional pay for public sector workers is that higher wage rates in and around London would certainly lead to even greater house price inflation and it would not be long before things were back as they were.
The other difficulty with regional pay is that equally trained and skilled staff around the country would get differant pay and differant pensions for the same work, which means that public sector agencies would migrate away to the cheaper regions, and this would risk depriving the most important economic districts of the country of essential services.
Evidence of this moving can be seen in the movement away from London of such large agencies as the DHSS - to Leeds, the Inland Revenue - to Nottingham, the Vehicle Licensing Authority - to Swansea.
These have not been much of a problem as these offices operate by controlling national organisations, but it would be all too easy for much more important insitutions(important for local residents) to move, such as hospitals, colleges, or push other services further away from where they ideally need to be, such as the fire service.
In London areas there is an immense problem of retention of trained public servants, they often do their training, get some years of experience, and as soon as is possible they then move(under equal opportunities commitments and internal transfer union agreements) to vacant posts away from the capital, in the case of firefighters it is almost seen as a form of apprenticeship where they work away from home for maybe five years before moving out again.
This means that regional fire departments are bearing less of their share of training costs.
All that can be said of almost any public servant, but I can also make other points about firefighters.
A very high percentage have second jobs, at good rates of pay, most of the ones I know certainly have, they can do this because their work pattern does not demand a full attendance in the same way as most other regular workers.
Some will argue that they need those second jobs for the income, if that is so then perhaps they could get $30k working in those second jobs and give up work in the fire service, nothing like high staff turnover to get the pay rates up.
The don’t leave the fire service because they have become accustomed to having two full wages, but that then makes it a lifestyle issue, and less of an economic necessity.
There are many others who would merit far higher pay than firefighters if you used the firefighters own arguments to support them, I really do not think you can begin to compare the stress and difficulty and relentless day after day pressure of a London copper with the work of a firefighter who may get involved with tragedy and the like, but the police get it so much worse.
Medical staff have to deal with the absolute worst that life can throw at them, from lunatics wielding weapons, to drunken brawls in casualty departments, to having to deal with the terminally ill of every age, to the physical exertion of trying to keep critically ill patients alive from on minute to the next, yet the majority of medical staff work far longer hours, much more unsocial ones and for less money than firefighters.
Those are just two examples that spring to mind, there are others, such as prison staff(of which I am one) social services workers etc etc etc
Usually when one puts in a pay claim, you have to be able to justify it, as yet I have not seen any evidence of the firefighters doing that, they give no clue as to what method they arrive at this figure of 40% rise, so there is no way to be able to point to any flaws in their reasoning, if any, why should the authorities simply accept that what the firefighters say they want is justified ?
At the end of it all, remember that Joe Public will have to fund all this, that other public sector workers are bound to say “me too” and ones with the greatest collective muscle will get their way, leading to lower pay rises for those with less power, no matter how deserving.
Do you want to pay substantially higher taxes to everyone in the public sector ?
Do you realise just how many of us there are ? 3 million in the NHS alone!!
Multiply the number of public sector workers with a 40% pay rise, does it still sound so good ?
Who will pay for it all, everyone as inflation rises, as you make greater demands to your own employers to maintain you living standards in the face of massively rising taxation?
Do you think this will make UK PLC a more expensive place to do business ?
Do you think that this would have a tendency to deter investments and trade ?
Do you like seeing more folk around you unemployed and claiming benefits from the taxes you pay ?
Not many other staff can get to retire on full pension at the age firefighter do either, when did you last see a 50 year old frontline firefighter ?Increase pay by 40% and what do you think happens to the pension ? Remember that retired firefighters are on index linked pensions that refer back to the current rates of pay.
Oh, and one more thing, the average pay for a firefighter is average basic pay, add in shift allowances, overtime, specialist grade allowances etc and then work out how much they get, every union dispute uses the lowest, most basic unenhanced pay rates in their publicity, I suggest you take a look at the actual pay slips of firefighters across a group of them over a period of time, you may find that things are not quite so desparate for them as is made out.
Joe Public?
Really?
I would have thought in England it would be Reginald Public.
Or at least Nigel…
I’m pretty much in agreement with casdave.
An 11 % increase, the figure suggested by the independent review, isn’t a bad . The unions were against changes in working practices (presumably this would affect the working patterns which allow them to take on a second job, as casdave explained). Again as casdave pointed out, other public services suffer more prolonged stress and, in the case of the police, danger. They do not spend all day everyday running into burning buildings. The police take much greater risks with their personal safety. Nurses and teachers put up with violence and abuse and are still expected to carry on.
Yes, the firefighters deserve a decent wage. They don’t deserve to get a hefty payrise and still be able to carry on with a second job. There are others emploed either in the public sector or indirectly (careworkers, nursery nurses and the like) who should get paid more. There are other groups who have seen their pay fall way behind (I’m one of them), but we are being realistic - settle for a reasonable amount, or get another job.
Question is, do firefighters have the moral right to strike? I think there was a similar thread recently about nurses. Sure, they should be paid much better—but do you want your Mom roasting to death in a fire because of their wage disputes?
Isn’t it equally easy to question the morality of not allowing them to strike?
Eve - I think a big factor in their ability to strike and remain morally okay is the fact that there is a standby - The Green Goddess. They’re not leaving old grannies to burn, and I don’t think they seriously ever would.
But of course. The “moral” question here is not whether or not they should strike, but instead whether or not firefighters have a moral compulsion to be a firefighter.
The fact that a job needs to be done in order to save lives does not mean that a particular person has a moral obligation to do it. Otherwise, we’d all be doctors, nurses, firefighters, etc.
Sua
The Sun has decided striking is immoral, so that answers, *that *question.
Worryingly the arguments made in that article look very similar to those I made in my earlier post. I need a stiff drink :eek:
I don’t understand.
Does the current rate of pay bring in the staff that is needed or are there positions open that nobody will take? If they can hire the firefighters they need then they are adequately paid.
If they can attract firefighters but have high turnover of the trained ones, then the starting salary is fine but needs to be raised for the experienced ones.
I am not a big fan of people trying to decide what a position is ‘worth’. Set a salary and see if it gets people in. If it does, that is what the position is ‘worth’.
People seem to go by the philosophy that salary=worth of work. Bull pucky. There are very important jobs out there that pay squat, not because they are not worth much but because that is the salary for which people will work.
andymurph64, in the UK some jobs (nurses, teachers, firefighters) are so badly paid that the workers couldn’t be in it for the money. It’s seen as a ‘calling’ or whatever. To take advantage of people who are willing to self-sacrifice to help others is just not cricket. There’s a balance to be set between getting people to do the jobs, and allowing people who would do the jobs no matter what the pay (within reason) to have a decent standard of living.
Are you trying to get them to call us quaint? 