London firefighters to strike on Bonfire Night

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What are they thinking?

Pants not sure what happened there!!

haven't read all the posts but I just have 2 comments to make -

1. I think the fire brigade union need to demonstrate a little more awareness about the wider society. Most organisations that go on strike aim to obtain public support. Going out on strike on bonfire night and thereby risking the cancellation of long standing displays (many of which raise valuable funds for charity) and are enjoyed by families all over the country will not endear their action to the public. And at a time where 100's of thousands of people's jobs have been confirmed at being at risk, IMO they should be gratfeul that the chnages being made to their working conditions will not cost them their jobs and financial security.

1. Someone on here said that the change to 2 12 hour shifts would impact on the alertness of the fire brigade crews. My DH is a paramedic and regularly works 12 hour shifts, day or night. He manages. And I was once told that only 10% of the london fire brigade is mobilised at any one time so I can't see that asking them to work a longer shift is likely to have any great impact on their ability to carry out their work.

ronshar
Just to clear up a few things:

"On a 13 hour night shift the crews get dinner. A full cooked hot meal, cooked in a lovely kitchen by the crews."

Most brigades operate a 15hr night shift. The meal is paid for and cooked by the firemen themselves. Not all brigades do this. Some just bring their own meals - a bit like working in an office with a kitchen really.

"If this get disturbed by a call out then they get the full break time again and pay."

They get a meal time. They don't get a meal break. They are allowed to eat their meal at a later time if they get called out in the middle of it but surely that is only reasonable. They are allowed to eat! They get paid because they are on call at all times.

"They have beds to sleep in as you cant expect them to work 13 hours without any sleep as this would be unsafe"

It is 15 hrs without sleep. They are only allowed rest time after midnight (and for most brigades that is after doing 7hrs work). This is also partly due to the shift patterns 2 x 9 hr day shifts followed by 2 x 15hr night shifts. Creates a lot of jetlag. In addition at busy stations they very rarely get that amount of rest. Maybe a couple of hrs at most. And most of the London stations will be busy. However, I am not sure what your point is? Surely it would be better to have firefighters more alert. Just because other services don't do it (and that is partly due to different shift patterns) doesn't mean that it isn't a more effective way of working.

They also do home and site visits on the night shift and off site drills. But all these have to be approved by control so if the brigade area is busy they are often required to remain at the station to allow them to cover for other engines that are out attending calls.

"They dont have to leave the station at night unless they get an actual call out."

They aren't allowed to leave the firestation unless they get a call out or control allow them.

"Also you wont find many fire crew who dont spend their 4 days off doing a second job. Not because they have too financially but because they have so much time off they get bored."

So we are led to believe by the media etc.
They don't have 4 days off, they have 3. On the 1st day I presume you are counting, the London Firefighters will have already worked 9 hrs from midnight - 9am. Most people would count 9 hrs at work as a working day. They then have 3 subsequent days. So they have 5 working days and 3 days free.

Most of them don't have any regular part-time work and about 1/2 of them do something from time to time. Firefighters in London get paid about £32k depending on length of service. Not a great deal if you are supporting a family so subsidising that with a part time isn't unreasonable. Other areas get paid less than that. They are allowed to have part time jobs outside their shifts, after gaining permission of the Chief Fire Officer of their brigade.

But if we are going to bring up part time work - most of the country is actually covered by retained firemen - who, by their very nature, have a main job and firefighting is their part-time job. So often they could have worked a full day at their regular job and then get called out at 2am and then go back to the day job the following day. Not sure how that is good for anyone? But more full time stations are becoming retained because of all the changes brought in by Labour in 2002/03. There are also less stations around the country and station grounds are getting larger - so

"Look at the working patterns of the Ambulance and police. They are treated like shite and mostly dont get paid as much as the fireservice!!!"

The police definitely get paid more than firefighters. But I completely agree wholeheartedly they do get treated like shit - especially the Ambulance/Paramedics. That isn't the fault of the firefighters though.

This is seen by many as a precursor to start closing stations at night. Although they get less calls at night they also get more deaths.
The London firefighters will be getting sacked on 26th November and will only be re-employed on different contracts and different shift pattern. The London Fire Brigade Chief has basically said to sort this out by any means necessary, by Bonfire night as he has been let down by the £12m contractors he had in place to cover the strikes - they can't cope. This "by any means necessary" has included maligning them in the press (both the DM and DT had crucial facts wrong in their reports on Friday).

Scallopsrgreat - very well explained! Thank you. My husband is a London FF and I have tried to explain all this on another thread but I think you explained it much better.

Firefighters have relied on an enormous amount of goodwill and admiration from the public up to now. I can understand how they want to protect their shift system but it's been in place for 30 years and I don't agree with the strike. It's a dangerous job but they do get better pay and conditions than all the other emergency services and much better than the armed forces. The 7/7 enquiry does underline a tension between the ambulance service and fire brigade and maybe they need to modernise.

Scallops, thanks for the explanation.

Three things I would like to add:

Working people have the right to withdraw their labour and I don't think firefighters should be any different.

They have given notice of the strike. Surely any sensible person / organisation will cancel bonfires and fireworks while they are on strike. If people continue to put themselves and their families at risk then they must be prepared to be accountable for their actions.

Lastly, think about the work we ask our firefighters to do and the risks they take. Going into burning and unsafe buildings to rescue people, rescuing people from lift shafts and putting their own lives on the line, diving into canals and rivers to rescue drowning children, dealing with bombs / explosions / crashed planes.

From a recent blog- posted by a london firefighter:

'What annoys me is a lot of people choose to believe the spin made up by politicians who are infamous for spouting lies to support their cause rather than believing the voice of firefighters who are prepared to risk everything to get people out of dire situations.

Who would you trust with your life ? a firefighter or a politician?

Firstly, I think the beds argument is irrelevant, I?ve not heard this mentioned once at work, there are much more important things at stake.

We are allowed to sleep between 0000 hrs and 0700 hrs on our (15 hour) night shifts but I haven?t been to sleep at all on nights in the last few weeks because we?re so busy there?s no point.

We?re busy because there London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) chose to remove 27 frontline fire appliances from stations a few weeks ago to prepare them for the oncoming strikes. Why they needed to do this, I don?t know.

But I can tell you that in this time, 5 persons have been killed in fires where they had one fire appliance turn up on the initial call rather than two because of the 27 appliances removed. Two firefighters have also been injured. One firefighter broke his back and both his legs when a wall collapsed on him and is now wheelchair bound. And one firefighter from my station, but a different watch, broke his collarbone at a fire 2 days ago.

You won?t see any of these deaths or injuries reported anywhere, it?s as if there?s a ban on reporting them ? strange that.

Some people are asking ?why strike on bonfire night?? Well, in 2 weeks time, the 3 months notice of section 188 of the Labour Relations Act runs out, and the Authority is able to sack every firefighter, crew manager and watch manager (basically every person you will see riding a fire appliance). We have little time to act. I would like to think this action will force the LFEPA to give in.

I was on the picket last Saturday, which was a very quiet day for the LFB, call wise, and listened to the brigade radio as to what was going on. Of the 27 appliances they had covering London, 13 crews gave up, mostly because they considered it too dangerous. They refused to go in to fires and fought them defensively which caused a house and a 4 story block of flats to almost burn to the ground ? like I say, just 2 major fires in one day in London is extremely quiet, and they couldn?t even cope with that.

When it came over the radio of a ?smoke issuing from 6th and 8th floor of high rise flats, multiple calls, persons trapped in flats? call, the emergency cover crews didn?t answer the radio and made up excuses not to go. Fair enough, a high rise fire is possibly the most dangerous any firefighter can deal with, but this forced picket lines close to the call to go to the call and deal with the incident to prevent any injuries or deaths.

Yet, after our strike action Brian Coleman and Ron Dobson publicly came out and said the emergency fire cover was a success and will deal with any other strike days just as well.

All they have to do to stop the strike action ? on the 1st of November as well as the 47 hours over bonfire night ? is call off the section 188 and return to the negotiating table.

The argument of firemen having second jobs comes up a lot. We work 48 hour weeks, and it?s quite sad that after working 48 hours where they may have to risk life and limb some members still need second jobs in order to fund a fami- but then I don?t have a family to feed.

Fire deaths are pretty low because the majority of people caught in building fires are rescued by firefighters. However, fire deaths in London are up by 20%, so surely work should be done to reduce this number- changing our shifts and closing stations at night is not the way to do this.

We have 3 memorials on my station for firefighters who have worked at the station, responded to a call and not made it home. I look at these every shift and it?s a reminder of the risks I am expected to take in order to save the lives of members of the public.

I signed up to the job knowing the risk because I?m passionate about saving lives and property in one of the greatest cities in the world. That?s why I?m going on strike ? because the politicians and senior LFB officers are more interested in saving a few pennies than a few lives.

Remember, whilst your firefighters have accepted a 3 year pay freeze, Brian Coleman voted himself a 50% increase of allowances, Ron Dobson is paid far more than the PM.

And on their cushy 6-figure wages, they plot the closure of fire stations to save money. Disgusting.

Just a couple of points to add here.

Not all brigades are the same, ronshar, my dh's brigade doesn't have beds, they don't have a cooked meal because they don't have a full kitchen, they have a couple of microwaves. It's not like you used to see on London's Burning.

Also my dh's brigade is already working the 11/13 shifts.

In reality the brigade and the public were both shafted after the last strike. The firefighters didn't get what they were promised. The public hasn't either because the governments much lauded 'modernisation' has mean't less frontline staff and poorer training.

I wonder how many MNers know what the turnout time is to a fire in their house? To mine in used to be 5 minutes for the first appliance and 8 minutes for the second. Today we're covered by a retained crew that won't even be in the station in 5 minutes; most brigades don't have a laid down turnout time any more.

does anyone fear that the threat to sack if carried out is a back door route to privatisation of the fire service?