For the Fire-fighters to Fight for their Interests Is Political! It Is Not a Crime!

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For the Fire-fighters to Fight for their Interests Is Political! It Is Not a Crime!

FBU’s Statement on Agreeing to Suspend Strike Action:
ACAS to Facilitate Exploratory Talks

John Monks on Suspension of Strike

FBU Hits Out At Government over Joint Control Rooms and Reduction of Staff at Night

The fire-fighters are fighting for their just demands using the tactics that they themselves have participated in deciding on. At the same time, they are coming into conflict with an immovable government that does not even recognise that the fire-fighters and other workers have interests. It will not even recognise that the fire-fighters have a right to participate in deciding on their own pay and conditions, nor will it pay any attention to the fire-fighters’ submissions on how to safeguard the future of a modern fire service.

When the fire-fighters’ union points this out, the representatives of the government claim that the fire-fighters and their union have "lost the plot". They claim that the fire-fighters are "politicising" the dispute.

The fire-fighters cannot afford to be apologetic on this issue. For the fire-fighters to fight for their rights and interests is a political act. Politics in the real world is about the fight for the interests of collectives. To refuse to hand over the initiative and to refuse to be reconciled to being wage slaves is the right and the duty of the fire-fighters. It is not a crime! The fire-fighters, along with all collectives of workers, have the honour of taking a political stand, and are concerned as human beings with the general welfare of society. It is right and proper that they should refuse to accept the marginalised role that the government in its arrogance assigns to them.

The government claims that it has the interests of other sections of society to consider. Whether one accepts there is any justification in this hollow claim or not, this is not an argument for riding roughshod over the fire-fighters, their concern for social programmes and over the demands of all members of society that their claims should be met.

On the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Labour Representation Committee, Tony Blair argued long and hard in the face of everything to the contrary that New Labour upheld all the same values as the founding fathers of the Labour Party. The one thing that cannot be denied, despite Tony Blair, is that the LRC was formed in order that the voice of the organised workers should be heard in parliament. It is hard to deny in the light of the stand of the present Labour government that such an aim is not out of place today. The government is attempting to vilify the fire-fighters and other workers for voicing this view in order to justify its attacks on the rights of the workers and its programme of delivering social programmes as a source of funding for big business. It will not wash!

The government at first asked where the money was to come from to satisfy the fire-fighters’ demands. It then put forward the argument that any increase in wages must be "self-financing", that is must be paid for by cuts. But where does the national wealth derive from, what is the source of the state treasury? The treasury funds are nothing but a slice of the national wealth. This national wealth has been created by the application of labour to natural resources in the final analysis. It is more than just that the government should be held accountable to the producers of this wealth. It is also just that that workers in the public sector should participate in deciding the mechanism through which they are to be paid. It is not the captains of industry who are the creators of the national wealth, still less the career politicians.

The fire-fighters’ dispute is presenting in a stark form the question of: who decides? What mandate does the government have for its actions? The consciousness among the working people is growing that the authority of the government for its anti-social, anti-worker programme does not derive from them, as it should in a modern democracy. Why then should they not demand that this situation be rectified? Just because the fire-fighters are workers does not mean that their every stand should be a-political. The very opposite is the case.

The fire-fighters are correct to persist in their struggle for their just demands with a clear conscience, despite the efforts of the government to suggest that to be "political" is the most heinous crime. From this it is but a short step to suggesting that such struggles should also be made a crime in law. Thus the entire gains of the working class movement in the 19th and 20th centuries are to be swept away in the name of "economic stability" and neo-liberalism.

There can be no way forward for humanity if such governments as the present Labour government are allowed to persist in their anti-social and anti-worker programmes. The workers must challenge their authority to act in this way and themselves come forward as worker politicians to decide their own future. To be political is not a crime!

The Fire Brigades Union’s Executive Council has met today (December 2) and has welcomed the constructive intervention by the Chair of ACAS, Rita Donaghy, into the current Fire Service Pay Dispute.

The FBU Executive Council has today agreed to take part in exploratory talks with ACAS to look at means and mechanisms for a positive way forward.

As further proof of the non-political nature of this dispute on the part of the FBU, the Executive Council has taken the decision to suspend the 8-day strike due to commence at 09.00 hours on Wednesday 4th December 2002.

Andy Gilchrist FBU General Secretary said: "We welcome the intervention of ACAS at this stage of the dispute and hope that all parties involved will grasp this opportunity to find a settlement agreeable to all parties concerned."

Commenting on the FBU’s suspension of strike action on Monday, John Monks, TUC General Secretary, said:

"This is the right move by FBU, and shows sound strategic sense by its executive. It puts the pressure on the employers and government to come up with an offer that can start real negotiations. The suspension of the strike, and the involvement of ACAS, will help provide the right atmosphere to get talks going again."

FBU General Secretary Andy Gilchrist on Monday accused the government of deliberately misleading people about the army’s response during the strike and plans to reduce night-time fire cover. He also demanded that the government come clean about the known dangers of joint control rooms contained in a government report.

"It’s no great surprise the Government has produced a report justifying its actions to date. But it’s madness to model the future fire service on the basis of 10 days’ figures.

"Raynsford and Prescott are the third set of politicians in 12 months with responsibility for the fire service. Only here today gone tomorrow politicians are daft enough to make wholesale changes on such little information, some of which contradicts its own report findings.

"By their own figures, 1,000 calls a day during the strike – 40% of all calls – asking for a fire appliance got none. That is astonishing.

"We have seen the Government’s modernisation agenda in action. They are using barely-trained, poorly equipped young men and women to run a greatly reduced service as best they can.

"They are not meeting the required turn out and attendance times laid down by the Government.

"Their future modernisation appears to be based on an army model of an 8-day 96 hour week. We cannot believe the public will think that is modernisation or family-friendly.

"They also claim to have joint emergency control rooms – they don’t. Putting police and army in a room with telephones does not make a joint control room. It is simply untrue; they are only taking fire calls, not police and ambulance and fire calls.

"The Government’s own reports come down against joint emergency control rooms for the same reason we do; they don’t save money and they put lives at risk."

He also said: "And talk about reducing the number of fire-fighters at night because of reduced risk is not only wrong, it is crazy. There are fewer fires, but they are more serious and dangerous.

"It is a fact that far more people die or are injured in fires at night. Around 100 more people die at night than during the day. Nearly three times as many people – 7,000 – are injured at night. Twice as many children die or are injured in fires during the night.

"To then talk about reducing the number of fire-fighters at the most dangerous time is utterly wrong. These politicians either don’t grasp the truth or don’t care."

The Home Office document The Future of Fire Service Control Rooms and Communications in England and Wales, a detailed study published in 2000 states:

"JOINT/SHARED CONTROLS REJECTED AS A UNIVERSAL SOLUTION

It should be noted that many of the potential benefits of joint/shared controls could be realised through other means, whilst maintaining single service controls. These would include improved control room procedures for multi-service incidents, improved liaison arrangements and the provision of data communication links between control rooms.

A national strategy that advocated fully integrated joint or shared controls as a universal solution for all brigades is rejected. Joint controls are unlikely to be feasible (in the medium term at least). Recommending shared controls as a universal solution would not be feasible because of non-co-terminus borders. It would also suffer from the following drawbacks:

It would impede the organisational development of the fire service;

It would result in only minor savings because shared controls do not reduce the number of staff required.

A critical requirement before a shared control could be considered is that the volume of fire incidents achieves a certain threshold level. Once this minimum size threshold is reached, brigades could choose to consider either forming shared controls with other services, or further increasing the size by joining with additional brigades. The factors to be taken into account in making this choice are given in the recommendation."
(page 21)

The report earlier spelled out the dangers of joint control rooms in some detail:

"Risk of reduction of performance for fire calls (joint controls fully integrated, i.e. not shared/co-located)

With joint controls, in which there are fully-integrated multi-service call-takers, there is a significant risk that response performance for fire calls would be reduced. There are a number of reasons why this might occur in a multi-service control room:

Multi-service control room staff may have less expertise in each specific discipline than single-service staff;

The other emergency services do not have the same performance expectations with regard to call handling or mobilisation as the fire service;

The other emergency services may wish to set the trade-off between staffing levels and speed of response at a lower level than is optimal for the fire service.

Underlying this is a concern over the ability of the fire service to influence events due to the fact that in a multi-service scenario, fire calls would constitute less that 10% of overall call volume."

(page 14)