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format| September 2002 I have been to many Branch, Brigade, Sectional and Regional meetings during this campaign for a fair pay adjustment. In some areas the Firefighters’ understanding of why we need a fair pay adjustment is well advanced, in some even more so. But what about Officer members? I have spoken to scores of Officer members and due to their work pattern, isolation and job requirements it can be more difficult to get to meetings and interact with a wider range of people to exchange views and ideas. I hope some of the questions I have heard can be answered here but if not then I am only at the end of a telephone as are our Officer reps. Some of the best and most thoughtful work in this campaign has been produced by our officer members. The strength of our union lies in its unity, diversity of personnel, and our democratic process. Officer members are an integral part of that diverse input and never has unity and inclusiveness been more important. As an FBU member who may not, like many Firefighters and Control Staff, be eligible for the Working Families Tax Credit, (although take a look at the web site you are in for a surprise!) you may not realise the situation which many Firefighters and Control Operators face day in day out. Consider for a moment which of the Firefighters you may be responsible for on the Fire Ground only deserves just over £6 an hour to be sent into an operational incident whilst under your command. This is not a misprint. The take home hourly rate for a qualified Firefighter is just over £6 an hour. Not a lot when you consider what you may be asking of them is it? I have been to Morton and done the fire ground scenarios. I’ve done the helicopter crashes, the tankers and the railway incidents. I’ve even done Ship Fire Fighting but working in a land locked brigade I doubt I will ever use that skill though its another one to record on the course certificate. But the real world is of course far different. Look at the reality today. Those you command both on and off the station not only get paid as unskilled workers but in many cases struggle to make ends meet. I have been asked if £30,000 is going a step too far. I don’t believe it is. It is at the moment an exercise in catching up to where we should be and then setting in place a pay formula to ensure we don’t slip so far behind again that we need a big increase to ensure pay reflects the skill and service a Firefighter provides. The level of pay achieved must also be such that the scales of pay for Officers fairly reflect what is expected of them in today’s Fire Service. So far I have not met an officer, of any rank, who does not believe Firefighters deserve a substantial rise. The only discussion we have had is the way in which that is arrived at, and how the figure we need to achieve to ensure pay is fair has been arrived at. For some years now delegates to Annual Conference have asked for a review of the Pay Formula. On Tuesday 14th May 1996 Ken Cameron told Conference that since 1979 male manual workers upper quartile pay had risen by 14% more than Firefighters. Ken went on to say “Our pay has definitely experienced some slippage during the early part of the 1990’s.” Ken was referring to work carried out by the Labour Research Department into pay. In the same response on pay Ken, as General Secretary at the time also told the delegates, “As I have said, there is a great deal of technical detail in the LRD report and we are going to meet with them to sift through paragraph by paragraph exactly what we can achieve” He told Conference that the findings would be circulated and ended by saying when the time was right we would make our case for a fair pay formula and rate. Interestingly enough as soon as Ken ended that speech the next resolution called for pay parity for our Control Members, moved by Hertfordshire. So in 1996 there were reports already given to Conference and sent to all Branches, recorded in the Conference report sent to every Branch, and reported to Brigade Committees by delegates to Conference that the Pay formula wasn’t working and had been slipping since, to quote Ken, the early 1990’s. Clearly as we are over 6 years on we haven’t rushed into a fair pay demand without a lot of research and work being done. In 1997 there followed resolutions on Pay for Control Staff and Retained members. Sections also debated pay and the pay formula and the pay of those in the private sector with less responsibility than comparative officer ranks rose more sharply. Not only Firefighter ranks but Officers were falling further and further behind the pay rates many of us felt we should have. By 1998 Conference was debating the level at which we should be in pay rates and a move to go from the upper quartile to the upper decile in the New Earnings Survey was put to conference. In 1999 we saw a pay rise of 2%. Better than the 1.4% we had received in recent times but still hardly a reasonable rise as house prices took even more housing beyond the reach of Firefighters and Officers moved even further across the country as they also tried to live on their wage. It also showed that the FBU and its members could hardly be termed greedy. No strike or industrial action was called following this 2% increase which also saw a Retained Firefighter now being paid £11:42 before tax and other stoppages for a 2 hour drill night. In the last two years we have seen not only at conference but across Brigades from Scotland to the South Coast, from Northern Ireland to Norfolk, a demand for action on pay. Since that speech by Ken Cameron in 1996 Firefighters, Control Staff and Officers have seen their pay fall further and further behind other workers. The 2001 New Earnings Survey shows, pay for Firefighters, which Officers are linked to, had indeed fallen considerably. The Average pay of Non Manual Male workers (the majority of Firefighters) was £582:40 a week and that was over a year ago. If £30,284:80 was the average pay for a non-manual worker in 2000/2001 isn’t this rate of pay fair for us over a year later? It is clear that not only is £30,000 UNDER what non-manual workers were earning almost 2 years ago but that Officers, linked to Firefighter pay are also being linked; due to the present arrangement, to manual workers. How can for example a Station Commander of Assistant Divisional Officer rank be classed as a ‘manual worker’? If the pay of Fire Service employees is fairly adjusted we will also see a reduction in the loss of personnel though movement and resignation, and a halt to the skills loss presently being felt in many Brigades. We need a fair rate of pay for all members of the fire service and we need that adjustment now. Our employers have said they would like to see an enquiry into Fire Service Pay. They have also stated that a fair rate of pay is needed. So they are saying then that pay at present is unfair but an enquiry is needed to establish what fair pay should be. I would have thought that the New Earnings Survey, taking as it does 160,000 people as a reference band, would be a fair and wide spread range from which accurate conclusions could be drawn. The findings of the Survey are as I have pointed out above. There has been a suggestion that we ought to enter an enquiry and that it would be a short delay until we achieve a fair pay rate and we could say we have jumped through all the hoops and have been shown to be fair in our claim. I have some difficulty with this concept. We have been fair. We accepted year on year pay rates which were falling in real terms. We have been patient. We have not had a pay adjustment and full review for ¼ of a century. The year Elvis Presley died was the last time we had a full review. We already have members jumping through hoops as they complete claim forms for low pay and juggle their life styles and home lives to subsist on pay below that which they should reasonably and fairly accept. The issue of a short sharp enquiry is a complete and utter nonsense. Take pathfinder/Fire Cover Review. No conclusion and 4 years of work from its inception. Look at other ‘reviews’ we have also had. Take for example the last evaluation of the many aspects to a Firefighters job, the Holroyd report. The Holroyd report was set up in 1967 and concluded by saying “The earnings of fully trained men with all round operational experience should be comparable with the national average earnings of skilled craftsmen” So as far back as 1967 independent reports reached the conclusion that we as Firefighters should be paid as skilled workers. The recent adjustment to Associate Professional and Technical banding is of course welcome but if we are described as such we should be paid as such. The difficulty we face now is that yet another enquiry will take time and delay the implementation of a fair rate of pay. Reconsider for a moment the Holroyd report. Although as I’ve indicated it started in 1967, it reported in May 1970! If we enter another review now, which is more than likely to conclude as all other enquiries have that our pay needs adjusting; are we expected to wait until 2005 for it to report and then to be paid fairly? We are already 18 months behind the figures from the NES. If we have 3 years more to wait we achieve nothing but another hill to climb and 4 ½ years further catching up to achieve. In December 1970 Reg Maudling, as Heaths Home Secretary, called on the employers to implement a 10% rise. The union agreed subject to the Cunningham report being implemented. However, it wasn’t implemented until the NJC agreed in December 1971. So perhaps I am being pessimistic. Perhaps it may only take a full year for a review to take place and not three. Maybe it will be 2 years and perhaps, like pathfinder, 4. I really don’t know but I have no reason whatsoever to believe it will be three months. And I don’t believe it fair to expect anyone to be doing a professional job for less than professional pay for a minute more than they should have to. Let alone those on state benefits. I have said publicly that I do not ever want to take industrial action in the fire service. I also want to say that I will not hesitate to do so if that is the democratic and fair decision of union members. Members who are from our part time stations, control rooms, shift full time stations, fire safety, training sections, community education and of course officer branches. I will, as will the entire leadership and membership of the FBU, support and strive not only for fair pay in the fire service and fair pay for Officers, but for a formula which provides recognition of our skills, responsibility, and professionalism. Can it be right for example that an Officer attending an evening call as part of their flexi duty rota can be in charge of an incident for what is in effect a lower hourly rate whilst there than those she or he is responsible for? We need a fair rate of pay and we need that rate of pay now. It cannot be a fair reflection of our professional skills to be sent into fires and operational incidents for a take home rate of just over £6 an hour for a fully qualified firefighter. Officer members are not immune from injury or death on the fire ground. Officers are not exempt from job related stress. They are also not exempt from suffering a take home pay which fails to recompense them fairly for the job they are doing today. But together we can ensure that the pay we received tomorrow and in the future is not only fair but remains so. Our request for a fair rate of pay today is no more than that. Fair. And for Everyone. Dean Mills Regional Secretary Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you have any queries or want any more information please contact me on:
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