Dear Brother/Sister
What is the purpose of this survey?
The Government has launched a review of firefighters' conditions of service, headed by a Human Resources consultant, Adrian Thomas. This is connected to the Knight Review and the current attacks on firefighters' pensions.
The FBU is totally committed to maintaining high-quality and professional conditions of service for all its members and has been firm in its opposition to many of the suggestions made by Government and the Employers.
If the FBU is to be successful in any campaign against this new wave of attacks on conditions of service you have got a big part to play.
In order to get a clear understanding of the strength of feeling of the membership on all the key Government proposals, we have commissioned the independent polling organisation YouGov to survey members about these changes.
This survey will allow you to express your views on what your conditions of service mean to you and how you may react to the proposed changes. It is simple to access the online survey and it will only take a few minutes of your time to complete.
How do I take part?
It's easy!
You can go onto the FBU website or go directly to the YouGov website: https://start.yougov.com/refer/vxndD7VXGNMJxD
It takes a couple of minutes, the questions are straightforward. Some questions are designed around your particular duty system.
It is very important that you take part and that you give your considered responses to the survey.
Why use YouGov?
YouGov is a respected independent polling organisation and the information we obtain from this survey can be used to highlight our members' attitudes without giving anyone the opportunity to say it is biased or distorted.
Please only fill in the survey once and do not use the same computer as other colleagues as the survey is designed to highlight repeat responses from one source (i.e. try to avoid using any work computers).
The survey will be live until Monday 15th December 2014 and you will get several reminders to take part. All FBU officials will be encouraged to maximise membership participation in this survey.
Why should I bother?
Your views are extremely important to us and if we are to conduct a successful campaign against these attacks we need to understand the strength of feeling of all members on a range of issues and use any information we gather to formulate a strategy.
There may be a particular proposal that you are strongly opposed to. If this is so we need to know.
What happens with the information?
Part of the work YouGov are undertaking is to gather the information and produce a report on FBU members' attitudes towards the proposals for future conditions of service changes. This report will be an extremely valuable tool that we can use to defend members' conditions of service.
This is only one step in any campaign but it is a vital step and one that you need to take part in ' please take part and make your views heard.
Please take a few minutes of your time to complete this survey ' this is a chance to highlight your feelings towards the Government's future plans for your conditions of service.
Best wishes.
Yours fraternally
Matt Wrack
General secretary
Circular ref
2014HOC0648MW
