Firefighter's Strike.

Factual Questions
1

I’m not going to get into the whole political side of things reguarding the strike (UK) For any dopers from far off lands (not sure if this is big news in the world) the British fire brigade has gone on strike for 8 days demanding better pay and conditions.
So the Army has stepped in to cover using Green Goddesses, these are 50 year old machines designed in the dark days of the cold war, and for want of a better word they are crap. Top speed 50mph (down hill with a following wind) just been fitted with metal ladders, had wood before, so on and so forth…

My point is, the army can’t have a Union so if it is oredered to cross picket lines and use normal fire engines I would imagine it would do it. So why isnt this tactic beeing used any ideas?

2

This has been discussed here & here in other forums.

The main crux to your question seems to be insurance for army personnel to use the fire trucks.

3

Oh very sorry didn’t mean to post a topic again. Thank you.

4

Actually, whilst this is in GQ rather than elsewhere…I have a question with (hopefully) a factual answer:

Can someone explain to me how the FBU equate a salary of £30,000 with the argument of requesting only £8.50 / hr take home pay for their members.

How many hours does the average fireman actually work? By my preliminary calcs this equates to 70+ hrs per week with no holidays at all.

What’s up with that?

5

The fireman are paid for when they are on call in the firestation but asleep I think (please correct me if I am wrong)

6

Start with £8.50 / hr. (the proposed take home pay)

Add back the National insurance & tax (say 25%) -> £ 11.33 / hr gross.

Now, if that’s from a £30,000 salary, thats for working 2647 hrs per year.

I work on average (with holidays, weekends and sick days) , about 1800 hrs per year.

2647 hrs / year is a lot over the average. Methinks someone is fudging the figures to pretend the raise is worth less than it is.

£30,000 per year is actually a per hour rate of closer to £15.00 pre-tax, or £11.25 take home pay. Can anyone dispute this? Why is no one calling Andy Gilchrist on this point?

7

Firefighters actually work fewer days of the year than just about every other public sector employee.

4 days on 4 days off, plus holidays.

Each work shift is of 12 hours, the overwhelming majority of which is spent at the fire depot, the number of hours actually carrying out their alloted role is a small peortion of their work time.

Add to this that firefighters can qualify for a full pension on reaching age 50, that they have enough spare time on their hands to have second jobs, that for every vacant post there are 40 applicants, and that it takes less than a year to train one, and you have to wonder about the laws of supply and demand.

I am a union shop steward, if I were to try drum up support for a strike for only a quarter of the amount demanded by firefighters, I would be laughed out of my workplace, and the full time union officials would probably advise me to resign.

This dispute is harmful to the whole of the trade union movement, it casts us in a greedy, unrealistic and blackmailing light.

Their current pay rate is around £10 or £11 per hour, the squaddies who are stinding in for them and who may well be in combat in Iraq in a few weeks do not get paid the same annual income

Makes me wonder, I know some high placed union officials have been careful about being seen to support this demand, I was at a conferance a couple of weeks ago. Usually when we have such events we announce our suppport for whatever ongoing labour disputes are happening, and these are then published in the minutes, often with some committment of logistical support, such as printing etc.
We did this with the higher education lecturers, theirs is a justifiable dispute, but there were no expressions of solidarity with the FBU.Even though they had not gone out on strike at the time, I would have expected something.

I think this speaks volumes about what others in the trade union movement feel about the level of this pay claim, especially when the overwhelming majority will be lucky to see 3%.

8

How come then all the FBU officials are stating categorically their members only earn only £6.50 / hour (after 14 years service), every night on the news?

I’m surprised no one has mentioned the things that you say in the ‘propaganda’ against the strike.

I think public support for Firefighters would wane drastically if the FBU were called as simply lying to the British public.

9

At the moment there are lots of things not being mentioned by various interested parties as regards the firefighters dispute.

If you do the sums yourself though then you can work out who is telling the truth.

Firefighters are rostered for around 155 working days, 150 after a certain number of years service.

Each shift is 12 hours long, during which time they may be called up and interrupt anything they might be doing at the time.

Like all workers they are entitled to rest breaks, these amount to just under two hours, the times cannot be fixed due to the nature of their work.
Rest breaks are not paid time.

They get paid around £21k per year, work it out…