Plans to silence the voice of frontline firefighters and to weaken their ability to protect their pay and conditions should
be unthinkable, says general secretary Matt Wrack
In May the Westminster government announced a long-awaited fire and rescue service white paper. We had known that the paper was coming for some time and had some idea of its content. But it was still breath-taking to read the scale of this attack and the lies used to justify it.
The white paper discusses removing firefighters’ right to have a collective say on matters including pay and conditions, and the work that they do.
Time and time again the government and fire employers have shown that they cannot be trusted to get it right. Time and time again the importance of having the voice of frontline firefighters at the table has been proved.
In the white paper, the government has created a false narrative around the fire and rescue service response to the pandemic and criticised the tripartite agreement for stopping services supporting their communities. This is categorically untrue.
Before a Covid agreement between the Fire Brigades Union, chief fire officers and employers (the tripartite agreement), Covid positive firefighters were deployed to doorsteps.
The agreement ensured proper health and safety assessments were conducted before deploying firefighters to additional activities such as transporting bodies and delivering supplies to vulnerable people, as part of virus control, which enabled thousands of firefighters to carry out extra tasks.
WE ARE PROUD OF OUR ROLE
These arrangements provided firefighters with the confidence to volunteer in large numbers to assist with additional pandemic related work. We are proud of them for doing so and of our role in assisting.
It is no accident that fire employers and government ministers get these sorts of things wrong. They are serving a political agenda designed to spend as little money as possible and silence the voices of frontline workers. Frontline firefighters, on the other hand, go to work to protect public safety and to save lives.
Firefighters deserve, as all working people do, to have a say over their terms and conditions, in proper negotiations with their employer. It is a basic democratic right.
It is a right that helps protect pay and conditions. It should be utterly unthinkable that the government could weaken workers’ rights in the middle of a cost of living crisis, yet here we are.
It is not too late for the government to change tack and get this right.
While we may always have differences with Conservative governments, we hope that Lord Greenhalgh, the fire minister, will listen.
However, currently, the government is being poorly advised, by politically motivated parties including the former chief fire inspector Tom Winsor and particular fire bosses. These people are providing misleading advice to government. Frontline voices must be heard rather than excluded.
Now, with inflation currently at levels we have not seen for decades, I know that FBU members are seriously worried about making ends meet during this cost of living crisis, and it is more vital than ever that firefighters and control staffs’ voices are heard in pay negotiations.
If the government has its way, those voices will be silenced, and this union will not stand for it.
WE WILL NOT STAND FOR IT
And when we say we will not stand for it, we need you. This union is its members. And I know that every single member and official of this union will detest these plans as much as I do and fight against them as hard as I will.
There’s a quote on the wall of the FBU office in Kingston, London. It’s from Percy Kingdom, the FBU general secretary between 1929 and 1939.
He said: “Those of us who have been in the service can well remember the time when the destiny of those in the fire service was entirely in the hands of the authorities to do as they wished, and it is as well, perhaps, to reflect on what would have happened had there been no such organisation as the Fire Brigades Union”.
The destiny of those of us in the fire service should be in the hands of its workers. That’s as true today as it was in 1929 and it is a basic democratic point.
Leaving it to fire chiefs will only lead to disaster.
