The Fire Brigades Union’s annual conference has indicated that it believes an attack on firefighter pay and conditions is coming from the Westminster government, and has passed a motion which prepares the union to fight this attack.
- The FBU is gearing up for a fight with the government on various conditions including firefighters’ rights to collective bargaining, as the government prepares to move to try and remove what is the last example of this from the public sector.
- The conference has also passed a resolution relating to firefighters’ Covid-19 working conditions.
- The conference took place online, due to the pandemic.
Conference delegates opposed any potential abolition of collective bargaining in the sector and the implementation of an independent pay review body in its place, as well as the ‘tearing up’ of the ‘Grey Book’ of pay and conditions agreed through UK-wide collective bargaining. Those propositions were recommended by reports of the Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) into the fire service, and are widely thought to be part of the government’s upcoming White Paper on fire reform.
In response to these propositions, conference mandated the FBU Executive Council to organise a ‘multifaceted campaign in defence of fire and rescue services, and firefighter pay and conditions’, a campaign which will ‘consider all legal, political and industrial options’.
The motion on these attacks also condemned comments made by Tom Winsor – the chief inspector at the HMICFRS – to the Daily Telegraph [Firefighters’ right to strike could be reviewed by Parliament, 18 March 2021], where he intimated that he thought that firefighters’ right to strike should be removed.
A further motion endorsed the FBU’s approach to agreeing terms for Covid-19 firefighter duties, and blamed fire employers, the National Fire Chiefs Council and the Home Office for the breakdown of the agreement that had previously been in place here.
The conference was held online for the first time in the union’s history.
FBU General Secretary Matt Wrack said:
“The government is on a path to ripping up long-standing protections and procedures which have kept firefighters safe for decades, and have helped ensure fairer treatment in the dangerous jobs firefighters do. Conference has recognised the seriousness of this threat, and will use every legal, political and industrial option to oppose these government attacks.”
