FBU Members’ Massive Yes Vote in Strike Ballot

Workers' Daily Internet Edition : Article Index :

FBU Members’ Massive Yes Vote in Strike Ballot
WDIE Commentary:
Firefighters Justly Demand their Worth

ASLEF Strike Fund Launched to Support FNW Members

Workers Movement News:
Consignia Signs New Contract for Outsourcing
Goodyear Warns of Further Loss of Workers’ Jobs

Further Draconian Government Measures Announced as Asylum Bill Goes through Lords

No War on Iraq! :
Alex Salmond Rounds on Jack Straw over Iraq
British Intelligence Dismisses Links Between Al-Qaida and Iraq

Britain Urged to Return Ethiopian Heritage

Professional firefighters and emergency fire control staff from all over Britain have returned an 87.6% vote in favour of taking national strike action.

FBU members were balloted for a series of discontinuous strikes in support of their current pay claim for a £30,000 salary for professional firefighters and emergency fire control staff with full pay parity for professional firefighters working the retained duty system and a new pay formula to maintain these levels for the future.

Andy Gilchrist, FBU General Secretary, said: "This is a phenomenal result and shows the strength of feeling our members have towards winning this dispute. Not one professional firefighter or emergency fire control staff member took the decision to vote yes in this ballot lightly. Every single one of them knows only too well the risks involved in withdrawing their labour from an emergency service. Our members are absolutely determined to end the tradition of low pay in the fire service. Our members are demanding a professional wage for the professional job they do. All we are after is £400 per week take home pay, which equates to £8.50 an hour.

"We want to see an end to professional firefighters working a 48 hour shift at the fire station and then instead of going home to their families, going on to another place of employment to get enough money to make ends meet.

"The FBU executive council has set the following dates for the initial periods of strike action.

0900 hours Tuesday 29 October to 0900 hours Thursday 31 October (48 hours)
0900 hours Saturday 2 November to 0900 hours Monday 4 November (48 hours)
0900 hours Wednesday 6 November to 0900 hours Thursday 14 November (8 days)
0900 hours Friday 22 November to 0900 hours Saturday 30 November (8 days)
0900 hours Wednesday 4 December to 0900 hours Thursday 12 December (8 days)
0900 hours Monday 16 December to 0900 hours Tuesday 24 December (8 days)

"Our dispute is not with the public, who are showing us tremendous support and we will therefore ensure public safety is guaranteed for November 5 and the Christmas period.

"It is still not too late for this dispute to be resolved; the government now has 10 days to wind-up their discredited, farcical review to allow negotiations to take place and enable the dispute to be resolved before any lives are put at risk."

The RMT rail union said at the weekend that rail workers will be ready to strike on safety grounds on the same days that firefighters take industrial action.

Bob Crow, RMT General Secretary, said: "While they take action we are not having our members’ safety compromised." Where rail workers found that their safety was compromised, he said, the union would ballot for strike action.

He continued: "We will be meeting with all the train operating companies this week and with London Underground, and we will be saying do you think it is as safe with Green Goddesses as it is with the fire appliances. If the answer is ‘no’ then London Underground and train operating companies should shut those parts of the lines down."

Bob Crow denied that the RMT was contemplating secondary action – which would be illegal under the anti-union laws brought in by the Thatcher government and which the Labour government has shown no sign of repealing. He said that train lines with tunnels and deep line tubes would need to shut for the duration of the firefighters’ dispute, and that if there was disagreement on safety grounds between employers and workers, then the RMT will ballot members on strike action. Hilary Campion, an employment law partner at Eversheds, a firm which has advised companies on anti-union action, said: "If employees walk out over safety issues then employers would not be able to take any action, except where those concerns were proven to be unfounded. Then they could only act against individuals for breach of contract; the union itself would not be vulnerable."

Mick Rix, General Secretary of ASLEF, pledged in a letter to the FBU that "everything that can be done will be done". John Edmonds, leader of the GMB, has said that everybody would accept that the firefighters are at the "top of the queue" for special treatment, and said that the government should not pick out firefighters for a battle over public service pay rises. Amicus leader Derek Simpson said a new pay formula was urgently needed because firefighters’ pay is out of step with that of comparable workers.

• The pay claim is for a £30,000 wage for wholetime professional firefighters and emergency fire control staff. Pay parity for professional firefighters working the retained duty system and a new pay formula to maintain these rates for the future.
• Currently, professional firefighters are paid £21,531 per annum.
• Emergency fire control officers are paid 92% of this rate.
• Professional retained firefighters are paid substantially less than their wholetime colleagues i.e. £6.20 per hour.
• Currently, firefighters pay is linked to a national formula which was borne out of the only national strike ever in the fire service in Britain, in 1977.

All kinds of arguments have been put forward by the government and local authority employers to suggest that to pay the firefighters their demands is impossible.

The employers said they were "incredulous" that the FBU members voted for strike action rather than wait for proposals from the review that the government set up on pay and conditions. However, the Bain Commission is not scheduled to report until December, and the firefighters have rejected linking their award with the so-called modernising of their working methods. Local authority employers said that if the FBU's pay demand were repeated across the public sector, the basic rate of income tax would have to rise by 20%, or 3.9p in the pound, as if that were the issue. Fire Service Minister Nick Raynsford called the FBU's decision to strike "wretched and wrong", with lives to be "put in peril", rather than examining the justice of the demands.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said the strike would be "dangerous and damaging". He asserted, "I believe the firefighters should not go on strike, as do the public." Prescott said: "No government can afford to see pay rises of 40% with the knock-on effects on public service pay and the economy." The Deputy Prime Minister claimed that a 40% pay rise was a "fantasy", and that the FBU should co-operate with the review of their pay formula, devised in 1978. But Andy Gilchrist of the FBU attacked John Prescott’s position, pointing out, "John Prescott's comments are astonishing. He led the rush by cabinet ministers only last year to vote themselves a 40% rise. We have been placed in an appalling position. All the government has to do is start genuine pay talks. It is that simple."

The prospect of industrial action by the Fire Brigades Union was meant to have been banished by the deal that ended the first national strike in 1977-78. The FBU leadership agreed a formula to increase pay every year. Terry Parry, the then general secretary of the union, named this the "Upper Quartile" because the deal tied firefighters' wages to the top 25 per cent of male manual earnings.

Recently, however, the deal has failed to meet the aspirations of firefighters, whose wages have been falling behind comparable employees, such as police officers. After five years' training a firefighter receives £21,531 a year, while a police officer with similar experience receives a minimum £23,037.

The FBU also points out that its members' jobs have changed out of recognition. There are more dangerous inflammable chemicals and more sophisticated ways of dealing with them; staff are trained to deal with terrorist attacks; the number of traffic accidents as a proportion of call-outs has soared and the techniques for extracting victims from crashed vehicles have developed dramatically. Firefighters must tackle prevention as well as cure. Firefighters want to be valued at the same level as technicians, not manual workers.

Local authorities, which employ firefighters, must address the legitimate concerns over pay. But being brought into play is Tony Blair’s mantra of "investment with reform". It is being suggested that government ministers would be prepared to fund a pay offer higher than 4 per cent, provided that it is linked to radical changes in working practices. Management wants, for example, firefighters to be switched between stations to follow the daily flow of people from town centres to the suburbs.

One of the crucial issues is how the worth of workers who perform a service for society is to be assessed. They do not contribute directly to the social product. Yet not only are they essential indirectly to the maintenance of the social product in the services they give, such as health care, education and firefighting, for example, but in a modern society, people have a right to expect such services, and that these should not be linked to a question of the "resources" of government or local authorities.

Whatever formula is adopted on the question of their pay should reflect the fact that society as a whole owes firefighters a special debt. The firefighters have a right to set their own worth taking account of this service they provide to society and their concrete conditions. Furthermore, they must have a deciding say in the organisation of the fire service.

The crisis of society has intensified since 1977, and the response of governments has been to put the claims of the capitalist class, particularly the financiers, above everything else. In these circumstances, the conception of free collective bargaining has been jettisoned since deals between workers and employers are fashioned so as to ensure that "partnership" between the two must serve making business successful globally. When it comes to public services, the deal becomes one of "investment with reform" and to class as "wreckers" all those that will not agree. Tony Blair in these circumstances is insisting that the "principle" of more money for reform applies to the fire service as much as to other public services.

Tony Blair has threatened that his government's survival is at stake. Gordon Brown, whose public spending plans have been hit by the stock market crisis, has reinforced his message. The Treasury is more than £1bn deeper in debt than the Chancellor had forecast. The financial crisis has hardened ministers' determination not to listen to the Fire Brigades Union and the firefighters.

Last week, Gordon Blair is reported to have told a private meeting of Labour MPs: "Just because there's all this going on with Iraq, don't think I'm not completely focused on public services reform because this is what will win us the next election." A source close to Gordon Brown told The Independent on Sunday: "There is not a penny more for public services above the three-year spending plans already announced."

The agenda of the working class demands that workers must get together and discuss what solutions favour them and how their interests are to be served. They cannot conciliate with the assertion that to stake a claim to their interests is of detriment to the general interests of society. As the FBU itself has indicated, when it comes to ministers and financial and industrial magnates, this argument is either quietly avoided or the assumption is made that the one necessitates the other. This does, however, suggest that workers must also elaborate that to take hold of and control what they produce is a way out of the crisis. Workers must continue to build their opposition to the agenda of Tony Blair and the rich and powerful elite which it serves, and not be deflected from fighting in an all-round way for their own interests and to safeguard the future of public services.

The train drivers union ASLEF has donated £10,000 from the ASLEF hardship fund to help support the striking members on First North Western (FNW).

General Secretary Mick Rix said, "Our members on First North Western have lost over a week’s pay this year due to the stubbornness of management in refusing to offer them an acceptable pay and conditions package."

Each of ASLEF’s 17,000 members will be asked to donate £5 to the fund to assist the striking members on First North Western and their families.

ASLEF members on First North Western will be taking industrial action at weekends until the weekend of November 23/24. The strike dates have been scheduled for weekends in order to minimise disruption to commuters and to let the public know exactly what service may be expected.

Mick Rix said: "In the interests of all concerned, we can only hope that the company and the Strategic Rail Authority will now begin to concentrate on resolving this dispute. Until that time all ASLEF members will be showing their solidarity with their fellow members on First North Western with this financial assistance."

FirstGroup’s operating profit from its three train operators for the year ending March 31, 2002, was £66.8 million. In contrast, drivers employed by FNW are amongst the lowest paid in the railway industry. The principle of equal pay for work of equal value lies at the heart of this dispute.

ASLEF is stressing that FNW drivers are seeking no more than fair pay and comparability with their colleagues performing the same job but for other train operating companies.

FirstGroup is happy to pay huge bonuses and make golden handshake payments to its directors, but not to reward those who provide a service for the customers who pay for them.

The example of Tony Osbaldiston (former Deputy Chief Executive of FirstGroup) highlights the differences between the "fat cat" payoffs for rail privateers and the salaries of railway workers. After seven years with FirstGroup, Mr Osbaldiston received a final payoff package worth £1 million, comprising £680,000 for "accrued and prospective salary and bonus entitlement", a further £193,000 in pay, and a further £101,000 in lieu of pension contributions.

Tony Osbaldiston was not unique amongst FirstGroup managers in enjoying such six figure sums. In 2001, four other FirstGroup directors shared bonuses totalling £387,000. Highest paid amongst these was Chief Executive Moir Lockhead who enjoyed a total package amounting to some £494,000.

A rally and demonstration against FNW Management and SRA interference, as part of ASLEF’s campaign in the continuing dispute at First North Western, has been arranged:

TUESDAY 22nd OCTOBER, 2002
Meeting at 7.30am to 8.30am at Manchester Oxford Road Station
then moving off to First North Western Headquarters

SAY YES! To Equal Pay for All Train Drivers

SAY YES! To Free Collective Bargaining

Consignia has announced plans to give a £1.5 billion computer contract to a private firm. Computer Sciences Corporation was selected as the preferred bidder for the 10-year contract to supply Information Technology services. Although the move was said to be aimed at generating savings in services which were not core to the postal network, it is well-known that such contracts are made at the expense of workers’ jobs and to profit the private sector.

The announcement, the fourth outsourcing deal unveiled by Consignia this year, inflames an "already volatile" situation, warns the Communication Workers Union. The union is planning to ballot thousands of workers for industrial action in protest at the planned sell-off of the operation which delivers cash and stamps to post offices.

Deputy General Secretary John Keggie said that a ballot of other postal workers is being considered in a bid to end the continued threat to terms, conditions and pensions by the outsourcing plans.

Postal services could be brought to a standstill in the run-up to Christmas, John Keggie warns. "This latest transfer of public servants into the private sector is a further example of a board driven by dogma in an attempt to balance Consignia's books and save their own skins."

The contract will include the maintenance of 42,000 desktop computers and development of Consignia's computer network. Malcolm Kitchener, Group Managing Director Business Services, said the proposed deal promised a new level of IT expertise.

Goodyear Warns of Further Loss of Workers’ Jobs

Goodyear has warned of further redundancies at its main British plant because of reduced demand across Europe.

The US company said its Wolverhampton facility continued to be a high-cost manufacturing source and would "inevitably" be affected by the overproduction in the tyre industry.

Production director Hugh Thompson said the reduced demand would amount to 3,000 car tyres a day, cutting production from 6,000 to 3,000 tyres, which would "undoubtedly" result in further redundancies.

Gerard Coyne, Midlands Regional Secretary of the Transport and General workers Union, said the announcement had come as a "hammer blow" to workers following a number of job losses earlier this year. Eight months ago the group announced it would axe 3,500 workers’ jobs following a downturn in profits. It announced 2,200 job cuts at the firm's Wolverhampton plant as part of the overall redundancies.

"Promises have only recently been made regarding the future security of the company. This announcement blows the company's previous statements out of the window," Gerard Coyne said. "In reducing the workforce, this opens a wound from which the lifeblood of the workforce is lost."

Two weeks ago, Goodyear arranged a multi-million pound deal with a property developer to sell its site and lease it back. But after the sale, Goodyear Great Britain's finance director James Fraser was quoted as saying the deal would have no effect on day-to-day manufacturing operations.

Local authorities will be issued with guidance explaining how to identify asylum-seekers whom they must refuse all forms of support, Home Office minister Lord Filkin told peers on Thursday.

This is in the wake of the passage of a controversial government amendment, introduced at committee stage of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill, which allows the Home Secretary – through the National Asylum Support Service – not to provide or to make arrangement for support if it is thought the claim was not made a soon as practicable.

The amendment was approved by 103 votes to 39, despite opposition from Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers.

Lord Filkin said local authorities had been identifying asylum-seekers. He added: "We believe that they will not have much difficulty in identifying and refusing to support those who have been refused NASS support for making a late claim. We will of course be issuing extra guidance to help local authorities address this and will be consulting with the LGA and local authorities about those regulations."

Later, the minister assured peers there would be sufficient offices around the country to make their claim in person. Lodging the claim in person increased contact with the authorities, which was on of the Bill's underlying aims.

He added that by March 2003, the government planned to have a substantial number of screening sites for in-country applications. These could include Croydon and other parts of London, Dover and various places in the south and southwest – for example, Portsmouth, Southampton, Poole, Bristol and Plymouth.

There will also be sites at Cardiff, Stansted, and in Norfolk, Birmingham and Northampton by the summer/autumn 2003; and various sites in the north east – for example, Sheffield, Leeds, Hull, Humberside, on the Tees and the Tyne; and Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast.

This is one more example of how the government is refusing to recognise their rights as human beings of people seeking asylum in Britain. The Asylum Bill must not go through!

The Westminster leader of the Scottish National Party Alex Salmond rounded on Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on Friday for saying on BBC Radio that Britain and the US were prepared to act alone in Iraq, without the authority of the United Nations.

Alex Salmond said: "It is essential that the international community resolves the Iraq crisis through the United Nations, and it is totally unacceptable for Jack Straw to be saying that the UK and US reserve the right to act outwith UN authority.

"Jack Straw and Tony Blair are very careful not to spell out this position in the House of Commons, because they know how unpopular it is on Labour's back benches.

"At a time when the focus is on the international community working through the Security Council, it is appalling that the British Government are being so openly contemptuous of the proper world authority."

British Intelligence Dismisses Links Between Al-Qaida and Iraq

British intelligence agencies have dismissed claims by the Bush administration that there are links between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist-network, according to a report in the Irish Times. The claims are being used by President Bush to press his case against President Saddam Hussein.

The allegations have reportedly sparked off a dispute in the US about the way information and speculation by the CIA is being used by the Bush administration for its own ends. Both British intelligence (MI6) and counter-intelligence (MI5) have been deeply concerned about unsubstantiated claims made by senior members of the Bush administration, notably Mr Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, about the threat posed by al-Qaida. They say the claims could be counter-productive since they are plainly misleading. Mr Rumsfeld claimed last month that US intelligence had "bullet-proof" evidence of links between al-Qaida and the Iraqi regime. He added later: "But they're not photographs. They're not beyond a reasonable doubt." George Bush had suggested that al-Qaida leaders were in close contact with Baghdad. British intelligence sources firmly reject such claims. Asked whether President Saddam Hussein had links with al-Qaida, one well-placed source replied, "Quite the opposite." The message from British intelligence is that, far from allying himself with al-Qaida terrorists, the Iraqi leader is distancing himself from them.

British sources interpret the murder in Baghdad of the former Palestinian terrorist leader, Abu Nidal, in August as evidence of the Iraqi President’s concern about accusations that he is harbouring terrorists, especially one whose loyalty he could not rely on. British intelligence sources also dismiss claims by Washington that Mohamed Atta, alleged to be the ringleader of the September 11 terrorists, met an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague on several occasions.

They also dismiss claims that Ramzi Youssef, convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre, was in fact an Iraqi agent who studied in Swansea, south Wales. Last October, Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, sent James Woolsey, a former CIA director, to Swansea in search of evidence to back up the theory. He returned empty-handed. An alliance between al-Qaida and Saddam Hseein makes little sense, say British sources, since Iraq's secular regime would not appeal to al-Qaida fundamentalists. Al-Qaida, the sources add, have paid little or no attention to the Palestinian struggle despite attempts by Bush administration officials and Republican politicians to establish a link between Palestinian extremists, al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.

The sources also dismiss attempts by the Israeli government – seized on by CIA officials – to link Iranian-backed Hizbullah extremists in the Lebanon with al-Qaida. They also say there is no evidence that al-Qaida fighters who fled from Afghanistan and are now reported to be in north-eastern Iraq have links with Baghdad.

Deputy Speaker of the Ethiopian House of Peoples’ Representatives Dr Petros Olango has called on the British government to return Ethiopian heritage taken by the British army in 1868 and now found in various British museums and in the hands of individuals.

According to Ethiopian News, the monthly publication of the Ethiopian Embassy in London, Dr Petros reiterated the need for the return of these cultural objects at a joint meeting between members of the Ethiopian Parliamentary Standing Committee of Culture and Information and the British MP Derek Wyatt, member of the British Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee. The meeting took place in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on October 3. The Ethiopian Deputy Speaker emphasised the importance of the objects of Ethiopian heritage in boosting the Ethiopian tourism sector which would, in the long run, contribute a great deal in reducing poverty.

Dr Petros also explained to Derek Wyatt the Ethiopian Standing Committee’s programme and major objective of preserving Ethiopia’s cultural heritage and collecting those items that had been dispersed throughout the world.

Derek Wyatt advised the Standing Committee to push his Parliament by all means possible, producing convincing evidence why the heritage items are so important for Ethiopia.

The British MP was on a working visit to Ethiopia from October 3-5, which was characterised as both productive and fruitful.