Firefighters on Strike: Report from the Picket Line

After two years of futile negotiations with a government firmly committed to torching public services, members the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) were finally pushed to take strike action today in an effort to ward off the vicious vendetta the government is pursuing against the public.

In this instance, firefighters across the country went on the offensive undertaking a four hour strike because the government, against all rational evidence, is attempting to raise their retirement age by five years, from 55 to 60.

This move not only endangers public safety, but given the extreme fitness that is required of all firefighters will most likely result in mass sackings, as thousands of firefighters become older and are no longer deemed fit enough to continue to do their job.

The Socialist Party talked to New Parks fire station rep, Edd Rogers, who explained how:

“At the moment you get all sorts of facts and figures from the government that firefighters have gold-plated pensions and that were going to end up with a pension pot of £26,000.

“What they don’t tell you is that £7,000 of that is our state pension which you don’t get until you are 68, and that the remainder of that is only paid out if you are lucky enough to have done 40 years service — which means you would have had to had join at 20 years old and finish at 60.”

This of course being nigh on impossible for the large majority of people, especially considering the fitness requirements mandated of all firefighters. Moreover, as Edd points out, if a firefighter fails to maintain his physical fitness to the age of 60, there are “no cushy little office jobs for him to go to to see out his days, he will be sacked on capability.

“And if you are sacked on capability, then you lose all pension rights until you are 68 years old. So you will actually be faced with perhaps ten or twelve years of no salary, no job, and no pension.

“On the other side of that, if a fire-fighter was to choose to retire at 55 [under the governments current proposals], say he thought that was as much as he could give, he would loose 50 per cent of his pension.”

Talking of hypocritical politicians with their lavish pensions, Edd adds:

“I would like to invite any of them to try at 59 or 60 years old to keep up with the work that we do at the moment.”

A fair point, but not one that will be taken up by our lazy political leaders, who are not only unfit for running our country, but seem to be competing (on a daily basis) to prove their ability to serve corporate needs to the exclusion of those of the rest of us.

Needless to say firefighters across the country, like all workers, do not take the decision to strike lightly. Contrary to the governments endless lies, Edd explained, “the pension scheme is sustainable, its just that they’ve spent it on other things.” He goes on to ask:

“Do people trust politicians that their telling the truth, or would they trust someone whose a fire-fighter and has dedicated their life to doing the right thing? I would like to think that (hopefully) that they would believe that someone like me or a fire-fighter who spends their life protecting the public and is a dedicated public servant.

And I would ask people: do you think you would get the same level of dedication from a politician or from a media mogul, or something like that?”

The answer is most certainly not. Firefighters who risk their lives day-in and day-out for the public good deserve better… much better.

But our government of millionaires and their corporate cronies in low places — who evade tax to the tune of £120 billion a year — are quite content to accelerate their attacks on the working-class.

Resistance to this dire state of affairs however is gaining apace, with workers across the board joining together through organizations like the National Shop Stewards Network to coordinate their fight-back; placing concrete demands upon the union tops idling at the TUC to finally set a date for a 24-hour General Strike.

What action comes next will be up the government. But what is for certain is that the government fails to back down from their latest attack on the public sector then the firefighters will be back on strike again.