The FBU has told its members to prepare for a tough battle ahead after Chancellor Rishi Sunak all but rebuffed the union’s campaign for urgent investment in the fire and rescue service and froze public sector pay.
The union’s #FundTheFrontline campaign, launched in November, demanded the money to deliver at least an additional 5,000 firefighters in the next year to protect the public from growing risks such as mass flooding and wildfires driven by climate change, terrorism and the dangers posed by a crisis in building safety.
However, delivering his Spending Review in Parliament on 25 November, Chancellor Rishi Sunak didn’t make any new funding announcement about the fire and rescue service.
The Chancellor provoked fury by announcing a pay “pause” next year for all public sector workers outside the NHS and earning more than £24,000 per year.
The earnings of workers whose pay is “paused” will not rise in line with inflation, amounting to a real-terms pay cut.
The treasury does not directly set fire and rescue service pay, but allocates central government funding for fire authority budgets. Accounting for inflation, firefighter pay is now £4,000 lower in real-terms than in 2010.
Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary, called the move a “cold, hard, slap in the face” from “the same hands that applauded key workers.”
“Not only did the Chancellor miss a real opportunity to deliver the levels of funding our fire and rescue service needs after a decade of austerity, but he’s threatening firefighters and other workers with another period of pay restraint – it’s disgraceful.
“Going into the New Year we know we have a battle on our hands to rebuild our service and protect our members from further attacks on their terms and conditions. “
Ahead of the announcement, Labour leader Keir Starmer and Shadow Chancellor Anneleise Dodds told Parliament that firefighters deserved a pay rise.
But Sunak said that it would not be “fair” to give a pay rise to public sector workers, who had just come out of a decade of austerity-driven pay restraint, as private sector wages had fallen during the pandemic – an argument slammed by unions as “playing divide and rule”.
