Over 500 London Region Fire Brigades Union (FBU) members and officials rallied at the TUC on Tuesday evening as they gear up to fight threatened mass sackings.
London FBU is balloting its members for industrial action short of a strike over the threat to dismiss the entire London firefighting workforce of nearly 6,000 if they don’t sign new contracts to accept changes to their working conditions.
This comes as figures produced by the Communities and Local Government department, show accidental dwelling fires fatalities, which account for almost two thirds of all fire fatalities, were up by one from 209 in 2008-09 to 210 to 2009-10.
Revealing the anger that lies behind the decision to ballot, the London FBU’s latest newsletter describes the reaction to fire commissioner Ron Dobson’s threat to sack thousands of firefighters if negotiations on shift changes failed to produce his desired outcome.
The FBU described the commissioner’s intervention as ‘calamitous’ and ‘indefensible’, and said the threat to sack the workforce had ‘blown apart’ negotiations which until then had been progressing well.
The newsletter reported: ‘The union said it had no choice but to ballot members for industrial action, and general secretary Matt Wrack had written to fire authority bosses, formally registering a dispute.
‘The union believes the proposed changes will wreak havoc on members’ family lives, as well as lead to cuts in fire cover.
‘In a message to staff, the commissioner confirmed that those who did not agree to new start and finish times would be dismissed without pay.
‘The threat immediately led to an outpouring of ill-feeling among the workforce.
‘The commissioner’s own blog, hosted on the internal brigade computer network, was besieged by angry firefighters expressing their bitterness at the turn of events.
‘One wrote, “I feel utterly worthless. I have given 15 years of my life to this brigade. Now we seem to be threatened with the sack. Please just give me a reason to be proud to serve this brigade again.”
‘Another spoke of the difficulties that would be caused by the proposed changes: “On the current shift system I spend time with my young children every day of their lives.
‘ “Under your proposed 12-hour shift system, I will not get to see them for a period of 72 hours every eight days. Maybe you can explain to my kids how not seeing their father for days on end will benefit them.”
‘The surprise move by Dobson came just days after he and his deputy, Rita Dexter, wrote to staff in positive terms on the commissioner’s blog, expressing their approval at the manner in which the talks were progressing.
‘This was reinforced by the attitude of the brigade’s negotiating team at the talks, who at the most recent meeting on 5 August told the FBU that they were pleased with the progress being made.
‘The mixed messages raised questions about who was ultimately responsible for the decision to start the process of consulting the union over mass dismissals (a procedure known as “section 188” under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992).’
Union negotiator Paul Embery said: ‘Either the commissioner was exceedingly naïve and impetuous to do what he did, or someone else took the decision for him.
‘I think it’s fair to say that the chair of the fire authority, Brian Coleman, was a key player in the decision.’
He added: ‘We didn’t go looking for a dispute, but if the brigade thinks we will just sit back and do nothing while they threaten the livelihoods of nearly six thousand of our members, they’d better think again. The gloves are now off.’
Embery summed-up the mood: ‘Our members are livid at the way they have been treated. It is impossible to quantify the level of ill-feeling the events of the last seven days have caused.
‘For a public sector employer to threaten to sack almost six thousand people just because they won’t agree to detrimental contractual changes is an absolute outrage.
‘Whatever happens now, even if the commissioner were to suddenly withdraw his threat tomorrow, the damage has been done, and the aftershock will be felt for years to come.
‘Our members have long memories, and they will not forget the bullying and intimidation they have been subjected to over this issue.
‘The union in London is as strong and determined as ever, and we stand ready to take on this fight.’
Meanwhile, the latest National Statistics on fires, casualties, false alarms and non-fire incidents attended by the Fire and Rescue Services in England, reveal that between April 2009 and March 2010 there were 328 fatalities; five (one and a half per cent) more than in 2008-09.
In 2009-10, the number of non-fatal casualties from fires fell by 8 per cent to 8,500 from 9,200 in 2008-09.
In England the Fire and Rescue Services attended 527,000 fire and false alarm incidents in 2009-10 – a six per cent decrease on 2008-09.
Total fires fell by three per cent to 242,000.
Dwelling fires were unchanged at 39,000 and fires in other buildings were down by one per cent to 22,000.
Fire and Rescue Services attended 143,000 non-fire incidents in 2009-10, down eight per cent from 2008-09.
The largest categories were as follows: road traffic collisions (24 per cent), lift release (14 per cent), effecting entry (11 per cent) and water removal (11 per cent).
The government report revealed the risk of fire in the most popular building method for new social housing in the UK, confirming fears that were expressed over the fire in Camberwell last year, in which six people died.
The Local Government and Communities department report said: ‘This analysis focuses on the amounts of heat and flame damage in buildings identified as being timber-framed compared with fires in buildings recorded as being not of special construction.
‘The first section considers buildings that were not under construction, while the second examines buildings under construction.
‘Both consider dwellings and then non-residential buildings separately.
‘In 2009–10 there were 802 fires attended by Fire and Rescue Services in England in buildings of timber frame construction.
‘Examination of the distribution of the extent of fire and heat damage shows that fires in buildings recorded as being timber-framed had proportionally considerably fewer fires of damage of 5m2 or less.
‘This observation does not stand up to scrutiny however, since the structure of a building is unlikely to have any bearing on numbers of small fires.
‘What is likely however is that the type of construction of a building, particularly of a dwelling, will often not be evident following extinction of a small fire.
‘This is because timber frame dwellings are built to look like a building of standard construction.
‘It is reasonable however to assume that fires with heat and flame damage of greater than 20m2 will result in timber frame buildings being identified and reported accurately.
‘Of the 802 fires in timber frame buildings, 175 had heat and flame damage of more than 20m2.
‘Of these, 49 were in dwellings and 118 were in non-residential buildings. The remaining eight – far too few from which to draw conclusions – were in other residential buildings, of which four were fires in caravans.
‘Fires in timber frame dwellings not under construction were proportionally fewer in the lowest category included in the analysis (21–50m2) than for dwellings of no special construction.
‘The opposite is true for all categories of greater area of damage.
‘The Incident Recording System asks for all building fires “Was there any special method of building construction involved?” with responses being categorised according to the following list: None, Timber framed, Cladding, Sandwich panels, Atria, Thatch, Large single storey retail premises, Other, Not known.
‘In dwellings, damage of over 20m2 is almost without exception beyond the room of origin of the fire.
‘The appropriate statistical test (Pearson’s chi-squared test) indicates that fires in timber-framed dwellings do tend to have a greater area of fire and heat damage than fires in dwellings of no special construction; i.e. that the differences in proportions observed are unlikely to be the result of chance variation.’
