AHEAD of today’s and tomorrow’s four-hour national fire strikes in England and Wales, leading firefighters told News Line they want general strike action across the public sector.
Firefighters in England and Wales will strike for the fifth and sixth times this weekend, between 6.00pm and 10.00pm on both Friday 13 and Saturday 14 December.
Paul Neale, London South West Region FBU Organiser, told News Line: ‘The government aren’t listening, but we’re quite prepared to have a long battle.
‘The issues are clear – we signed a contract which clearly stated that we would have a pension at the end of our careers, but now they are tearing it up and rewriting it, all against their own medical evidence which says it is physically impossible to continue doing this job till you’re 60.
‘The biggest casualties will be female firefighters, who the medical evidence shows will struggle to maintain fitness levels.
‘The government are totally aware of this and this attack on us is part of a vindictive campaign against all those who have borne the brunt of the immense crisis caused by inept bankers and their political allies.
‘I think we should call for much longer strikes of eight days, and the TUC should be calling a national general strike of everyone out, on the grounds that we must defend our jobs and the services we provide.’
Kev Game, Norfolk Brigade Secretary, told News Line: ‘To be fair, its absolutely disgusting. We are not trying to get more from our pensions, to retire any earlier or to get a gold-plated pensions. All we want is what we signed for.
‘The last two years they’ve put our contributions up, so we are now paying 13% of our wages for our pensions every month, one of the highest contributions anywhere in the public or private sector.
The strike action that we are taking has actually come from the membership – a 78% vote in favour of strike action. Personally, I think we should develop the struggle, especially when you’ve got the news that MPs are getting an 11% pay rise, about £7,500 a year.
‘They say we are all in this together! Well, public sector workers like ourselves are all in it together, all of us having had a pay freeze for coming up to four years now.
‘I think we should have a general strike to show that the public sector workers are very unhappy about the way we are being treated.’
Matt Wrack, Fire Brigades Union General Secretary, said: ‘It’s now been almost two months since the government has been willing to meet us for negotiations despite several invitations from us.
‘Until they do and until they start to actually resolve the dispute, we’ll keep up the pressure for the sake of public safety and our members’ pensions.
‘In a week when the full details emerged of a £7,600 pay rise for MPs’ — which will also increase their pensions — firefighters’ anger at the government’s unworkable, unaffordable and unfair proposals will be even greater.
‘No firefighter wants to strike, but we cannot allow the government’s ludicrous proposals — and outright hypocrisy — to stand. We’ll keep on fighting until the government sees sense and comes back to negotiations.’
