Scooby-new, you are a welcome breath of fresh air :)

Thankfully there ARE people like you around.

I feel sorry for PSLewis, he always seems so miserable. What a waste of a life to feel like that the whole time :D

You said it- I hope that we can all enjoy our lives more and think a little of others instead of focussing on our own envy!

I think I'll end my contribution to this thread on a positive note-all those that felt it better to attack- one day you'll need the support of others please think about your actions!

Me too.

Out on a positive note :)

bye then....:rolleyes:

That explains everything...

Scooby New ,do you think a 40% pay rise is:
1. too much
2. about right
3. not enough

Of all the accidents in our area this last few days with the bad weather and what, I see in the local press that firemen had to attend ONE accident to disconnect batteries on the 2 cars involved!
£30,000 p.a.? B*ll*x!!!
Alcazar

ScooBabe

You dont know me, I dont know you - I 'may' come across as always miserable to you, you only see me on here. Some - on here - and who know me outside of ScoobyNet know different, ok? ;)

It appears to me that you have fallen into the trap of, 'Ohhhhhh, look theres a fireman, isnt he so brave, so hunky, so sexy' in typical girlie fashion ;)

Those of us who have been around a while, been there, done that, done this, done the other, KNOW whats what and the Firemen are Overpaid, Oversexed and Overpaid and Overpaid!!! Its a FACT!! Doesnt make me miserable :rolleyes:

All in my humble, of course!! ;)

Pete

i would be grateful to whoever took me out of a crashed car / burning house... fireman, butcher, candlestickmaker...

The fact that nurses and doctors need more money / less hours is true. i dont see them striking. Therefore they have my sympathy.

The fact that firemen need more money *may* be true. i see them striking. Therefore they have none of my sympathy. In fact I am so strongly against it that is makes me ANGRY!

I am hoping beyond hope that I keep my job. The climate isnt good for jobs at the mo. Very wrong time to ask for 40%!!!
They should ask for a settlement that allows them to not get into this situation. That should be their main target. But do we hear any of that? nope.

Also - taking strikes in WINTER... say theres a cold snap again... loads of snow and bumps and crashes... Firemen on strike... a vital PUBLIC SERVICE that WE pay for and WE cannot use... rediculous... all because the people who get paid to do the job will not do the job... i just cant see why people think its right that they should strike!!

Ban unions. Ban strikes. Firefighters get back to work and stop putting my life at more of a risk.

pslewis,

I am sure you are not miserable all the time. I'm sorry for saying that. We have different beliefs thats all :D
People think Im miserable for supporting Man Utd...they are probably right ;)

As for my taste in men ;) people on here who know me know that uniforms dont do it for me, neither do hunky men.
Ok, I tell a lie... the occassional man in rally gear sometimes does it ;) Yep, just call me a girlie :D :)

I was gonna leave this one alone but "ban unions- ban strikes"- thats really great isn't it?

While were at it lets gag the press, bring in arbitary powers of arrest and imprison anyone who doesnt agree with our point of view. Hey it's starting to sound a little like Iraq or something isn't it??

I think the firelighters biggest danger comes from, not the government or reforms but the FBU.

Gilcrist seems to want to use his position as a stepping stone to further his “political” career.

Striking has only weakened their (firelighters) position and ultimately I believe they will be worse off, eventually.

As an outsider I think the fire service needs complete reorganisation, perhaps a freighters job should be seen as a short armed forces type career (for most people) i.e. 5-15 years then leave, not the “cushy” job for life that it is now.

The Firemen need to wake up and smell the coffee, big time

since when does a union mean freedom of speech?

unions are bullies.
unions try to get results by controlling the labour of a sector.
unions stand up for other unions because they are unions.
union member HATE with a PASSION anyone in their union who would not strike.

they are the worst part of our history.

all imho.

Pete - all I'm saying is that if I was reading this as a fireman, I would certainly start thinking next time I'm at an RTA or whatever "Wonder if this person/these people were slagging me off"

It's the same in any job - called Human nature. However, it's lucky that I'm not a Firefighter!!:D:D:D:D:D

On the subject of pay, I do believe they (along with all the Emergency services) are entitled to better pay. My wife is a nurse, so I see it from her point of view too.

To all those people who were saying "I haven't had a pay rise since XYZ". All due respect but "so what". Unless your job is in the Emergency services, then you cannot compare your job to theirs.

The above statements are, of course, purely my opinion (therefore, I don't care what you think(!) and you're not going to change mine. So don't try!:D)

Dan :p

;)

The most meaningful comments so far was the fact these guys signed on for the pay and conditions they have. If they were under threat from paycuts, redundancy or change of working conditions then they , as well as myself , would want to take action. By that I don't mean strike.
They have a good salary & conditions at present. Just think of other poor sods like the 500 in Gourock who got a letter at NewYear telling them not to come back to work as the factory was closing. The firemen are now starting to annoy me also.
Alas

Just a brief idea of what a Firefighters career can entail (this is only a fraction of their duties):

* Graduate of the Institute of Fire Engineers.
* Institution of Occupational Safety & Health.
* Leading Firefighter Examination.
* Sub Officer Examination. Responsible for the lives of *all* members of his shift and assesing the situation of any calls
* Station Officer Examination.
* Qualified Breathing Aparatus Wearer. The ones who bravely risk their lives *inside* burning fires
* Qualified Emergency Fire Appliance Driver.
* Operational High Rise appliances.
* Operational Rescue Tender.
* Fire Safety Department responsible for:
- Fire Prevention.
- Representing the fire authority in Licencing Magistrates Court for Inspection & Certification; This involves checking buildings such as offices, bars, restaurants, factories, sports stadiums etc, meet up to strict fire safety regulations. In fact just about any sort of premises where people gather in high numbers need to be inspected.
- Education: the fire fighters also have to spend time in the community educating people about fire risks and dangers, and fire prevention.
- Responsibility for deployment of whole time and retained fire fighters to ensure that you, the general public, are covered.
* Firefighters also work as members of the executive management team with councils. They must attend these meetings outside of the hours on shift, regardless of it being their day off.


Why do they strike?
The fire fighters only go out on strike as a last chance to find a solution. This dispute has been being worked on since *MAY 2002*. The strikes this winter were due to the lack of progress made after over 6 months of negotiations.

The fire fighters do not want to strike as they are a professional service dedicated to saving lives and do not wish to put the lives of the public at risk, even though they risk their own lives to save others.


Why are they striking?
The Firefighters are striking due to the goverments view that they can save money by 'modernising' the existing service i.e. job cuts.

It is not only the firefighters who's jobs will be cut but also the call operators - who are expertly trained to deal with situations (they are not just civilains in a call centre), jobs in fire prevention, trainers etc

Why are they asking for a payrise?
The pay rise has been asked for as a independant report, which was commisioned by the government, indicated that a 40% pay rise would finally put the employees on the same level as other emergency services. This figure was not suggested by the fire fighters or the FBU but the independant author of the report.

Not only did this report call for the payrise it also called for the government to invest a further 100% into the fire service to enable it to remain as the best Fire Service in the world.

So what happened to the report?
This report was dismissed by the government as they would have to spend money on the fire service. The government then commissioned a second report which is the governments view only i.e. make cuts to the service. This report is the 'Bain Report'. It holds no input from the fire service or the FBU.

Are there any flaws in the governments 'modernisations'?
Yes.
- The government wants to mix whole-time and retained firefighters. This idea is flawed as retained firefighters can be upto five minutes away from the station they are attached to. This would mean that the whole-time staff must wait for the retained firefighters to get to the station before they can set off to the emergency. This 5 minute period is crucial to anybody whose life is at risk.

- Removing the overtime ban. The overtime ban was introduced as the firefighters were working upto 70 hours per week to keep manning to the required levels. Just like doctors, if they are overworked and tired accidents could happen.

The overtime ban also meant that the firefighters could not just choose days off which could plunge numbers below the minimum staffing levels. It also made them book holidays upto a year ahead and only if there were enough staff on the rota for that time.

Changing the Shift Pattern - Changing the shift pattern from two days of 09:00-18:00, 2 nights of 18:00 - 09:00 and 4 days off to three shifts per day of 8 hours each is again flawed as this would mean that another 1/3 would need to be recruited, trained and deployed. As the government is trying to cut jobs this clearly means they will not employ a further 1/3 of firefigters which is required to make this change.

Reducing night cover - this idea is plain dangerous. Night is the most dangerous period for the general public, be it fires, road traffic accidents etc. House fires are most frequent at night and these situations often put entire families at risk as detection is much harder as most people are sleeping.


Should I care if the fire service is reduced?
Do you value your life? Would you want your family to be saved by a highly motivaed, highly trained specialist service, or just let them burn? If the government is allowed to reduce the level of protection the service provides, lives will be at risk.
A clear example of the resulting mess where a service is reduced is obvious, the Police and Health services: Crime - has anyone noticed that there is a crimewave, especially gun crime? Hospitals which have had cuts made have huge cues, over-worked doctors/nurses, ambulances take ages to turn up. You decide.

Please don't judge these people who risk their lives for the public, remember they are also campaigning to keep levels at the high standard that they are already at, and improve them too.

Scooby Wont thanks for highlighting these details- I knew most of that anyway but judging from some of the comments on here others don't fully understand the issues and prefer instead to trot out the tired arguments fed to them by the press/Govt. This dispute isnt just about pay (although you'd think it was)but safety as well- the night manning issue is scary!

Firemen do a job I wouldnt be prepared to do for less wages than I got in my first IT job.

Firemen- not everyone is against you- in fact a lot of us support you- Keep up the good work

Propaganda!
Pot - Kettle! :p

so ur saying that if the government met all the working conditions/invest 100% more into the fireservice and yet keep the wages to the 4% then they firefighters wouldnt strike?

as for the duties...
Fire isnt nice, neither are the other things that they have to sometimes deal with - but thats the job that they signed on the dotted line to do :confused:

Let me think... :rolleyes:
Good argument :rolleyes:

My family is important to me, as is my life - and thats why I am against the striking of the firefighters.

Err ok then!
Let me see.. ah! they havent striked...! ;)
Yes.. start to strike over pay, then say that its about underinvestment/cuts... :rolleyes:

No... They are striking about wages.
If they were wanting to stop cuts etc... then theres other ways to do it... but its not that.

From the petition form:
Err... wheres the bit about the investment in the fire service?

Firefighters pay...
After 15 years' service (qualified):
1999 = 21,018
2000 = 21,648
2001 = 22,491

So its going up 500 a year?
So in 5 years time it will be about 25k?
Not poverty pay.
Granted they deserve more, but cant see it being that bad that they need to strike over it.
No wait.. arnt they striking over working conditions and potential cuts ;)

And if they progress..?
Leading Firefighter After 15 years' service
2001 = 24006

Sub Officer After 15 years' service
2001 = 25503

Station Officer After 15 years' service
2001 = 29577

And on it goes ... the max i found was
Senior Divisional Officer After 15 years' service
42168

So the FBU recognised that there will need to be a change in working practices... including the overtime ban?

Seems to me that holes in the argument are plenty.

But at the end of the day.. Stiking is not the right way to do things... public or private sector.

IMHO :)

What cr4p posted above listing 'Their Duties' it reads like the tasks of someone who NEEDS to itemise them to show some kind of value for money!!!

Its the same as mine, now lets see, 'Pick up pen', sit at PC, attend meetings, Certify Designs, ................ blah blah blah ANYONE can itemise their job to make it 'APPEAR' like they do LOADS!!

Truth is, I know 3 firemen, I tell them the same as I say on here AND THEY DO NOT DISPUTE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They are FULLY aware that the money is good for what they need to do, the KNEW what the terms were, they can do their second jobs while at work, they ALL earn loads in total!!

They strike because their UNION says so, they HONESTLY thought a strike vote would win them a BIG increase, 16% they were hoping for - the Union told them they would get it too!!! Now they have been shafted by the FBU - they are NOT happy about striking and WOULD have taken 4% with NO modernisation!!

Like sheep to the slaughter - they KNOW that they WILL NOT and CANNOT win!

Pete

On earlier posts I have said that, in the midlands at least, firefighters are not poorly paid for the hours and the work that they do. Some of the guys who work for me have served a four year apprenticeship, spent six years at college and attend training thoughout the year to work as electricians on very high voltage equipment. One mistake and someone will die.

They average around 55hours a week and earn around £24000.

They are more highly trained than fireighters and the job is more dangerous (One of our employees is a retained fire fighter and he agrees), the pay is determined by supply and demand.
With 40 applicants for each fire fighting job the supply is outstripping the demand already. If any fire fighter thinks he is underpaid LEAVE! there are 39 others waiting for your job.

My wife has spent the last four weeks in Hospital and I can say any extra public money needs to go into nursing and hospital. My local hospital can only deploy 2 fully trained nurses on each ward as they can't recruit any. As it take two nurses to give out controlled drugs my wife is having to wait upto an hour to get pain relief. [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img] . She has also been in hospital for this length of time because she has been waiting for scans, the equipment is there but there is a shortage of operators. They can't recruit because the pay is too low.

It doesn't take a genius to work out where the money needs to go.

Lee

Anyone care to commit themselves to saying that a 40% pay rise is fair and not excessive ??

I'll say that the firemen deserve a 40% rise- along with NHS workers (not the fecking managenent though) and some other deserving public sector workers who get paid what I would regard as loose change for doing a hard, unpleasant job.

Whether the country can actually afford that is another matter...but a lot of the people who've posted to this thread seem to have an ideological problem with the 40% rather than a practical one.

PAY RISES FOR EVERYONE, SHORTER HOURS AND A HAPPY LIFE!

(I just know some killjoy will rattle one about what the country can afford, doom.......gloom...isnt life terrible..well actually no its great so try having some compassion for your fellow man)

Hoooray, I just want to hug you Scoobynew :D:)

Anyway, I know that will produce some comment, so I definately will not add further to this thread. :D

Er,..... have a nice day ;):)

If successive governments hadn't wasted BILLIONS of taxpayers money over the years on ill convieved, poorly implemented and horrendously expensive projects (be they civil, military or whatever) that no one either wanted or benefited from then there would be plenty money to pay:-

The Firefighters
The Nurses and Doctors
The Police
The Ambulance Service
The Military services

And any others I may have ommitted significantly more money to reflect the value they are to society as a whole.

Unfortunately successive governments in the UK generally have wasted huge sums of money over the years in pursuit of their own self gain, as individuals and as groups.

Much as I personally consider Blair to be a smarmy, self promoting to55er who is doing the country no good whatseover, he's probably no worse than many who went before him.

The problem is one of a culture which allows government to be so corrupt. But there's hardly any surprise, after all they are only human.....

D

The Government remains poorly briefed on the real agenda for change in the British Fire Service, and also on existing service issues and facts. This poor briefing has undoubtedly raised the
temperature of the dispute amongst firefighters and emergency fire control operators.

Salary Comparisons with other Workers
The salary comparisons, quoted by Government Ministers, between firefighters and other occupations have been misleading at best. Although a nurse’s annual salary is lower than firefighters, nurses claim an unsocial hours salary supplement for working shift patterns (including nights and weekends) which is not available to firefighters.

Examples from serving health service workers show:
• An 'A' grade support worker who works 37.5 hours per week and whose annual salary is £12,220, takes home approximately £1,000.00 per month with the unsocial hours salary
supplement.

• An 'E' grade staff nurse whose annual salary is £21,000, and who works 3 nights a week, 10 hour shifts, takes home £1,500.00 per month with the unsocial hours salary supplement.

• Firefighters work a 42 hour week and receive no salary supplement for unsocial hours including nights and weekend working. Their annual salary is £21,531 however their monthly take home pay is approximately £1,240.00

Similarly selective Government comparisons of police constable's salaries ignore the difference in standard working week hours (41.9 hours for firefighters and emergency fire control operators
against 36.2 hours for police constables) and the fact that there is an incremental 14 year salary increase in the police based on time served.

A police constable in his/her 5th year receives a salary of £23,323 (compared to a qualified firefighter receiving £21,531) however the police constable’s salary grows incrementally each year to £29,062 after 14 years (2001 salary levels). A full time qualified firefighter receives only one salary increment at 15 years which boosts his/her annual salary to £22, 491.

The ‘generous pension arrangements enjoyed by firefighters’ which the Government quote ignore the fact that full time firefighters pay 11% in pension contributions, with a qualified firefighter paying £197.36 per month in superannuation contributions to ‘enjoy’ these benefits.

This pension contribution rate is higher than any other public sector worker.

Emergency Fire Control Operators contribute not to a fire service pension scheme, but to the Local Government Superannuation Scheme. Retained firefighters are currently prohibited from joining the Fireman's Pension Scheme.

ScoobyWon't

We could go on forever comparing who gets what, the fact remains that even with the current salary every fire fighting job advertised is vastly over subscribed. This means there are loads of people out there wanting to do the job on the current salary. Most fire fighters would end up doing an industrial type job if they left the service. Most industrial workes would love £21k for 40 hours and on nights they have to work all night.

The highly trianed people who work in my department earn £24k-28k a year but thats working 55 to 60 hours a week. If a firefighter worked another 20 hours on a second job hewould be on a lot more. When the working time directive comes into force and my electricains can only do 48hours their wages will fall to around £21k. Most of them would jump at the chance of a cushy job with £21k for 40 hours, our night shift work for a living as well.

The NHS jobs may seem OK but they cannot recruit and people are leaving, this usually means the job isn't worth the money.
I earn three times as much as a staff Nurse but from what I've seen over the last few weeks I wouldn't do their job even on my salary.

Maybe allowing firefighters to do overtime is an otion.

Lee

Some basic economics.

We all pay taxes whether it be VAT, Income, Council etc.

These taxes pay for our services, whether it be Fireman, Police, Libaries, Dustmen etc.

Only so much in taxes can be raised, so the Government (short of borrowing which leads to it's own problems) only has so much to spend.

If the government cave in to the Firemans 40% pay rise demands (whether they deserve it or not) other public sector workers will be sure to follow. This is to some degree being seen in Germany where most Public Sector workers are looking to strike.

Now consider for a moment the economic outlook, not that pretty is it. Most people are spending, but they are getting their cash from remortgaging, and guess what, house price increases are slowing and some even talk of a crash. If this happens the whole house of cards falls down.

Interestingly in Germany and France where Unions hold a lot of power, unemployment rates stand at 9.7% and 8.9% respectively. The Uk rate is only 4.9%.

So support of the Fire Service pay increase is somewhat irrelevant, the bottom line is at this point in time it would be near to economic suicide to cave into them.

Finally my Father in Law retired from the Fire Service in June last year and in an exchange of views over Christmas he told me he had ripped up his Union card 2 years ago so not all Firefighters support their Union.

Dave

I think a lot of them don't. But they are too scared of bullying and intimidation to admit to it though [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

and as i said before...

ban unions.

Oh I did but QRs (Queen's Regulations) state that it's illegal for any serviceman to get drunk - no exceptions!

Fukc QRs.

[Edited by fatherpierre - 1/11/2003 1:06:28 AM]

F wits ... lets get rid of firemen , coastguards, nurses, police, Civil Servants, teachers, and bankers .............................WOW lests not get rid of *ankers.. So much POWER and sh@t wages

[Edited by stephen emery - 1/11/2003 1:02:56 AM]