Firemen's strike - what do you think?

[SofiaAmes]

So what does everyone think about the firemen striking? Do they deserve a 40% payrise? Should they be allowed to strike?
I'm fed up with the media spin and would love to know what real people think.

Agree it is immoral to tempt nurses from countries where their training would have been a huge strain on a poor economy and they are really needed by the people. We should do more to retain our own nurses - pay, conditions etc should all be looked at seriously. This seems to be a real crisis.

I'm not sure, but I think that it takes new recruits about 4 years to get to the current £21k.

With regard to final salary pensions, these are being phased in the civil service. Current civil servants had to make choices this autumn about which way to go - I know of no-one who chose to opt out of present scheme. But don't you worry all you private sector people, pensions will soon be at the mercy of the stock market too.

The argument for paying civil servants s pay was always the 'jobs-for-life' and 'the pension'. Both 'advantages' have been eroded massively in my 16 years in the civil service. The pay, however, still remains s

Have been avoiding this thread as I didn't really want to debate such a contentious issue, but glad to see that everyone seems to be making really good points without getting shouted down.

Someone pointed out the difference the wages would mean in London compared to the rest of the country. I can understand why London firefighters would feel the need to strike, 22k a year wouldn't pay their mortgage! But up here it's a damn good wage. So maybe the government should look at managing their wages to reflect the difference (doubt the firemen would like that idea though!). Also I was astonished to hear that many of them had second jobs, my sympathies flew out of the window with that one!

My dh earns a pittance for what he does - digger driver, and believe me there have been plenty of fatalities and serious accidents in his line of work. He cannot afford to put 11% away for a pension, he gets around 1.5% rise each year, which is laughable! If he went on strike, they would probably wait until winter and then sack him quite legally, as jobs are sparse during winter and the firm he works for are notorious for laying staff off during these months. So when I compare their situation to ours, I'm afraid I don't agree with their argument at all.

I suppose the difference between fireman and other dangerous lines of work is that firemen knowingly go into areas that already dangerous. My DH worked off-shore, which is second only to commercial fishing, I believe, for fatalities. But when working offshore (or being a digger driver or a builder) the job isn't unsafe in itself. It will only become unsafe if an event is triggered by human error or neglect of working practice or failure to maintain equipment etc, whilst attending a blazing house or a chemical spillage is an unknown quantity because until the area is secured events cannot be predicted. That's how it seems to me, at any rate.

See your point, but roofing looks v dangerous to me just by virtue of being on a slippery slope v high up. As does negotiating scaffolding or working on demolition sites where it is unpredictable which was rubble will land etc. Diving's really dangerous too, isn't it? Eg army and police divers. I have to say, I'm very glad I don't do any of these jobs.

I tried to find some stats on the net for deaths in different industries. This is from a report of a survey published in the Lancet in 1998.

List of 10 most dangerous professions:

1. Fishermen
2. Merchant seafarers
3. Aircraft flight deck officers
4. Railway lengthmen
5. Scaffolders
6. Roofers and glaziers
7. Forestry workers
8. Quarry and other mine workers
9. Dockers and stevedores
10. Lorry drivers

(About 103 fatal accidents per 100,000 workers per year for fisherman, and 52 per 100,000 per year for merchant seafarers.)

Also:
"Painting and decorating are far more dangerous occupations than working for the armed services, claims the medical journal The Lancet, in a report which is based on a study of the 30 most dangerous occupations. It shows that sewerage workers are more likely to die at work than firemen, and that refuse collections are more hazardous than working on building sites. Sea-going fisherman are at least 50 times more likely to suffer fatal accidents when doing their jobs, than workers in any other sectors, while merchant seamen are 25 more times likely to get killed at work."

I think I heard that about 3 fireman a year die in the line of duty, but can't find anything to back this up. So maybe the danger aspect of firefighting is not as significant as you might think, compared to apparantly "safer" jobs.

The fireman who died just before the first strike was apparantly the first one in three years.

We had members of the firebrigade address a union meeting at work last week. I thought they were sincere, but a bit naieve. Mind you, a newly qualified lecturer (degree plus teaching diploma - 4 years) earns £16,900. So the "We are so poorly paid we can't afford to live in London" bit went down like a lead balloon.

DH has just told me that offshore standards have improved so much since Piper Alpha and the heli crashes of the 80's that workers no longer appear near the top of the dangerous jobs list.

DS's first job in 2000, after 5 yrs at uni, paid 12K. With prices in Edinburgh being what they were, it was a struggle to exist and there's no way he could have bought a place to live.

I think you will find with the fire fighters that they have to pay quite a large sum into their pension with the nature of their job much more than average. Its so frustrating sometimes listening to our government (who in turn are not listening to the people) arghhhhh

SueDonim

Shell had a helo crash off Lowestoft a couple of months back that saw 11 or 12 people killed. These accidents are thankfully less frequent, but still not quite few enough.

Rosy, there is a whole article about dangerous jobs in the Daily Mail today complete with stats - not sure if they're from the same year as yours but the jobs you quote look familiar.

(Not my Daily Mail btw!)

But that was a helicopter operated by a third party not Shell's fault surely?

So Janh a secret Mail reader huh? Whatever next!

I love firemen (well, doesn't every red-blooded female?) but I do think 40% claim was just plain ludicrous. And to head almost straight into an 8 day strike is bad planning, particularly to the fighfighters themselves who will be very poorly off just before Christmas.

Those of us in other public sector jobs who struck earlier this year were pretty shocked when we got 4%, but then despite a total of 6 and a half years at university I still earn less than a firefighter (or a policeman, or a nurse, or a teacher...). But I've faced the fact that while there are over 50 people applying for every job in my profession, I'm never going to get paid more, and to some extent the same is true of firefighters.

I didn't like seeing Blair doing his Maggie impression, but to be honest I'm not surprised. The economy is so much on a knife edge right now he can't risk the nightmare of massive increases in borrowing AND Council tax AND inflation.

Very interesing stats Rosy. As a follow up, it is even more dangerous to continue (at age 35) to continue to smoke 40 cigarettes a day, than to be a deep sea fisherman for 40 years.

Damn! Knew I should've changed my name for that post!

I'm intrigued Phillipat - what do you do that is so badly paid and yet so popular!!!??

Miriam, we'd heard about that crash as two of those killed worked for the same company as DH. As you say, thank goodness there are fewer accidents and of course we all look forward to fewer still. Part of DH's work here in Indonesia is to improve safety aspects. Without casting aspersions, let's just say there is plenty of room for improvemnt.

Bayleaf, I'm an art gallery curator. We once got more than 1000 applications for a post here (5 years ago, admittedly, but the post was paying less the £10k and we wanted an MA).

Wow!!! Lucky for me then that I can't draw and never considered a career in ''curating'' !

Has anyone logged onto the FBU website? I wanted to check what firefighters really got paid, as I was worried I was being fed the usually load of old cack by the gvmt, and actually, I didn't think they were doing too badly at all. The lowest salaries are just starting salaries for first jobbers who are unqualified. There are loads of grades all of which attract pay rises and they go up fairly steeply. OK, nobody earns a city broker salary, but who does (apart from city brokers, obviously). I'm not sure I do think that an 18-20 year old in their first job is really suffering if they earn less than £25,000. I wonder, what do other people think is a reasonable salary for a 20year old in their first job?

Been thinking about this, and I suppose it depends on whether most people have a good chance of promotion unless they are totally rubbish at their job. If they do get promoted regularly then the pay seems OK (not fabulous but OK with a decent payrise), but if not, then I can see that it would get increasingly hard to manage on the money. The site didn't mention London Weighting.

I agree with aloha - there do seem to be possibilities for promotion, with the top salary being about 42k. Obviously only one or two firefighters will reach this, but it is a long way beyond the maximum salary in many jobs. As a teacher, it would have been very hard if not impossible to get beyond 30k.

They also seem to have very good pensions provided for them - 2/3 salary.

No coherent thread to this message, just 4 things that have come up re: the strike in the past few days.

a)I think my views on the strike might be very different if I didn't work with a fireman. Not sure if that's to do with his attitude (if he can skive, he will, and it's certainly not because it's too much for him to do both jobs - he's just a bit of a lazy git), or if it's just made me realise that so many of them do have second jobs - it's not just an urban myth.

b) My uncle is a fireman, but was not a member of the FBU, he was in the Fire Officers Association, who apparently are not striking. However, after the first strike, the remarks and comments that were made, along with people reminding him about what happened 25 years ago - men still not speaking to this day, children ostracised at school, bricks through windows etc.., he felt that he couldn't put his family through that, joined the FBU, and was subsequently striking, against his better judgement.

c)There is apparantly a fire station where no-one was a member of the FBU; 6 years ago they started using a defibrillator on their fire engine and the FBU told them to stop, as they were "putting paramedics out of jobs". The firefighters didn't want to stop, as they'd seen lives being saved, so they all left the FBU. For reasons which we can only guess (see b) above), they are now all members of the FBU, and therefore cannot now (when not striking) use the defibrillator.

d)On Thursday night, there was a fire at a cinema dh was working at. They called the Green Godesses, but in the meantime, dh was approached by an off-duty fireman, who when he heard that it was a real fire, called his mates, who arrived within a couple of minutes, happily breaking their strike. 5 minutes later, the Green Godesses arrived, and after a frank exchange of opinions on who was in charge of the operation, a physical fight broke out between one of the firemen and the officer from the navy who was in charge of the Green Goddess. Needless to say, dh asked them to kindly stop and go and put out the fire before his cinema burnt down!