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   Vol.66/No.47           December 16, 2002  
 
 
Firefighters union in UK calls
rally to defend jobs, services
(front page)
 
BY JONATHAN SILBERMAN  
LONDON--Firefighters are mobilizing for a December 7 march and rally here to build solidarity with their fight to defend jobs, services, and living standards. Leaders of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) called the action a week after Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced that up to 11,000 firefighters may lose their jobs as part of the Labour government’s proposals to "modernize" the fire service.

The 55,000 firefighters have already staged two national strikes. One began November 13 and lasted two days. A second strike lasting more than a week started November 22 after the government vetoed a deal negotiated by the FBU with the firefighters’ employers, the Local Government Association (LGA). The agreement would have combined a 16 percent wage raise over 12 months with negotiations over "working practices."

During the strikes the government has organized 18,700 troops to drive firetrucks that have included both aging "Green Goddesses" and more modern equipment.

FBU leaders called off an eight-day strike due to begin December 4 and entered "exploratory talks" with a conciliation service, as a prelude to further negotiations with the LGA. They said that other stoppages planned for the weeks leading up to the Christmas holiday will proceed.

While initial media coverage of the strikes focused on the workers’ demand for a 40 percent wage rise, firefighters themselves stressed that jobs, along with the quality and extent of firefighting services, were also key issues. Prescott’s November 26 statement confirmed the unionists’ view.

Speaking before parliament, the politician claimed that job cuts would be made possible through increases in overtime, cutbacks on fire cover during the nighttime, when fewer fires take place, and other changes in firefighters’ shift patterns. In response, the FBU pointed out that substantially more deaths and serious injuries occur at night--along with casualties among the very young and the elderly.

The union’s national officer, John McGhee, opposed both the cuts and the use of overtime to make up for job losses. Speaking on the BBC’s Newsnight program, he said that the FBU’s overtime ban had created 5,000 jobs.

Prescott’s deputy, Nicholas Raynsford, defended the job cuts, saying they were a necessary part of the creation of a leaner, smaller fire service.  
 
Firefighters: no jobs-pay trade-off
Picketing firefighters have emphasized the centrality of the jobs question to their fight. "Job cuts mean fewer people on less fire engines going to the same number of fires," said Mark Steer, a firefighter at the Hammersmith fire station picket line. "I’m totally opposed to job cuts to give us a pay rise," said his fellow unionist, Howard Edge, to the BBC.

Having intervened to torpedo a possible settlement, government ministers have continued to play a leading part in trying to undermine the strikers’ confidence and weaken solidarity with their fight. "This is a strike they can’t win," said Prime Minister Anthony Blair on November 25. Should the firefighters win their demands, he added, "it would not be a defeat for the government, it would be a defeat for the country."

Playing on the fears of millions of working people about the perilous state of the UK economy, Blair "insisted that there would be ‘dire’ consequences for economic stability if the government gave way to unfunded pay rises," reported the Financial Times.

Echoing that position, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown described the 16 percent raise scuttled by the government the previous week as "simply unaffordable."

Bank of England head Edward George weighed in against the firefighters in similar terms, reported the Guardian newspaper, in a November 26 meeting with lower-ranked government parliamentarians. The ruling class figure warned of "copycat claims across the public sector" and said that the "knock-on effects of satisfying the firefighters’ pay demand would damage the economy."  
 
Expressions of union solidarity
Firefighters picketing the Barking fire station in East London on November 26 told Militant reporters that they expect to be on the picket lines past Christmas.

At the Hadleigh fire station in Essex, pickets reported that a factory gate collection organized by the Transport and General Workers’ Union at the nearby New Holland tractor plant in Basildon had raised £1,000 for the firefighters’ hardship fund (£1 = $1.55).

Some 50 members of the National Union of Teachers in the London borough of Islington joined the firefighters’ Upper Street picket line on November 26. Their act of solidarity took place as 60,000 teachers throughout London took strike action in support of their claim for a £3,000 increase in the annual allowance that compensates them for the extra costs of living in London. The strikers closed some 1,800 schools during the biggest such action in 30 years. Firefighters joined the teachers’ rally and demonstration that wound its way from Lincolns Inn Fields to the Oval cricket ground. An FBU representative spoke at the rally.

London council workers took strike action on the same day. Also on November 26, 2,000 ambulance crew staff in West Yorkshire staged a 24-hour overtime ban to reinforce their demand for improved wages and conditions. Along with their counterparts in Humberside and Merseyside, the workers are threatening further action over Christmas and the New Year.

Meanwhile, auto production workers at Peugeot and white collar workers at Jaguar are to ballot for strike action over wages.

Reflecting the rulers’ concern at these developments, Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf supported the government’s "tough line" in his "Comment and analysis" column in the November 25 issue of the big-business daily.

"A government’s monopoly over coercive power is the basis of civilised life," Wolf wrote as he warned Blair against those who advise a settlement with the FBU. "The government must not listen to these seducers," he stated. "If it were to fund a more expensive deal for the firefighters, it would soon have the rest of the public services on its doorstep. Each surrender would make resisting the next one more costly. The turmoil would grow, not diminish."

"The threat is particularly serious for this government," wrote Wolf. "Any Labour government finds relations with its trade union paymasters difficult; this one’s chief aim is reform of the public services; and that must include reform of public sector pay. The strike threatens the government on all these fronts."  
 
 
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