Control staff with the Essex fire service, 95% of whom are women, are striking today (25 August 2015) as part of a dispute over unworkable shifts imposed by Essex fire service managers. Control staff who once worked family friendly shift patterns are now being forced to work twelve hour day and night shifts.
Jo Byrne, executive council member for control staff for the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), said: “Many young mothers are in effect being told ‘you can have a career with Essex fire service or a family, but you can’t have both’.”
Control staff are also striking in protest at unprecedented cuts to the front-line fire and rescue service and their employer’s refusal to listen to their solutions to achieving the desired cost savings. Jo Byrne continued: “The Essex emergency fire control operators are showing a huge amount of courage. They are demanding that senior managers listen to the professionals who are delivering a fast class emergency public service. We are offering all the financial and efficiency savings required and yet the senior managers are insisting on imposing these changes.”
Today’s strike by control staff is the 5th day of 6 consecutive days of striking by Essex firefighters, who first walked out on 14 January this year when the service imposed the new family ‘unfriendly’ shift system – the service simultaneously introduced a new state of the art mobilising system that, after what management called teething problems, catastrophically collapsed in May resulting in the system being taken off-line and replaced with the ageing system it was meant to replace. There is still no date for when the new system will be reintroduced. Calls by the FBU for an enquiry into the failing IT system have fallen on deaf ears.
Alan Chinn-Shaw, FBU secretary for Essex, stated: “It is incredible that the senior managers have shown contempt for their staff and have been completely intransigent thus far, despite the union’s cost-neutral compromise solutions which match all of the productivity increases the services wishes to achieve.”
