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August 06, 2004
One of those days ....
We all have one of THOSE days from time to time, but this week I have managed to have three of them. To a large extent this is due to matters outside of my control, but that doesn't stop me from being very annoyed by the stupidity of it all. Stupidity which has ramifications far beyond the declared purpose, and which, if considered carefully by rational and honest people would cause them to think very carefully before leaping into action.
Unfortunately we are not in the hands of rational, honest, or even well-informed people.
Reference to the news probably won't provide you with any more information, either, because what is being said in public has been carefully sanitized to make the Union look like the villain. The truth is that we are now at the mercy of nasty vindictive little tyrants who are determined to destroy the Fire Service in order to bring to heel the trade Union which has exposed their true colours. Let me be clear, I carry no torch for the Fire Brigades Union. In my view they are a bunch of rampant Trotskyites little better than an unruly mob. Their original pay demand which led to the first strikes since 1977 was ill-judged, ill-managed, and frankly quite ridiculous. No one in their right mind enters into negotiations with a demand for that sort of pay rise. So, to a large extent they are the architects of the mess we are now in. But are they? Are they really the villains? Or was there someone feeding them the encouragement to think they would receive a sympathetic hearing if they brought their demand to the table?
It can be no secret that the employers (mostly fourth or fifth rate hacks in town and county halls too thick to be entrusted with anything they could actually break) have wanted for some time to change the pension rules so that they could get themselves out of the hole they had created by never actually investing the 11% contributions for superannuation made by the fire fighters. Instead they have spent the money subsidisng vote-catching schemes which Central Funding would not provide for. Now that they have to pay the pensions, they have a problem. They have to find the money - and they have spent it. They have also resented the uniforms and the ranks - because those people made them realise just how inadequate most of them are. Then there is the vexed question of Bank Holidays and "rest" periods. Well, outside of London, very few stations have entirely undisturbed nights; in fact it is really only in the big Mets that you find stations that quiet being wholetime as the norm; in the shires they are usually retained, so beds and stand down periods at night in the smaller shire brigades is hardly an issue.
As the Union pointed out, we now have a situation where a few London Boroughs are calling the shots across the entire service and for everyone. In fairness to the Union, they agreed to drop their objections to most of the proposals regarding rest periods and pay on Bank Holidays last week. It should therefore have been a rubber stamp exercise on Monday, but no, someone in Whitehall (please note that Mr Raynsford MP, Minister for Local Government and the Regions emphatically denies that he or his office ordered the London Labour Councillors to break the agreement!) had other ideas. Suddenly the quorum on the employers side rose by ten members - the majority of whom did not even know what was in the agreement they were voting on. Personally I am disgusted to learn that Conservative Party councillors sided with the neo-Stalinist Labourites to vote down the agreement and force a confrontation.
Barely was the dust from this in the air than the Chairman of the Employers Group representing the Local Government Association was sacked - but not before she had told BBC Radio 4 listeners that she had resigned in disgust at the tactics employed by her Labour Party colleagues. Classic "did she fall or, was she pushed?" stuff. Nor was that all; with cheerful disregard for the provocation or for the disruption, certain other measures have been instituted which will almost certainly gaurantee the escalation of the dispute. Personally I have no doubt that this is deliberate; it is becoming increasingly clear that the government wants to humilate the Fire Service, bring it to its knees,and reduce it to an unqualified and unprofessional service, alongside refuse collection and street cleaning, as a local authority service, under the control of equally unqualified civilian "managers".
The Union has been neatly painted into a corner with only two choices. To strike and accept the fact that this will give Ministers the excuse to impose a solution which will almost certainly include the use of their "emergency" powers to dismiss the entire workforce - and then re-employ them on a new and somewhat less favourable contract, rates of pay, and so on, just as was done in New Zealand 9 years ago. Alternatively, not to strike - and face the fact that the negotiating mechanism is now in tatters and there is no way to negotiate anything at all except the surrender terms and the signing of new contracts as per Option 1.
So why have I been having "One of those Days"? Well, I have had to spend the last two days putting in place contingency plans to limit the damage to various programmes that decisions made in Whitehall will have on the functions we are employed to deliver. As I said, I am not a Union man; I will be one of those left in the "middle" if there is a strike - and I will have to ensure, with a number of other colleagues in the same boat, of making certain that the services we deliver are continued in spite of the best efforts of the civil service and the Minister to destroy any goodwill and opportunity to maintain any normal function.
It is blatantly obvious that the government will stoop to any dirty trick it can to ensure that it gets its way. Even if that means destroying totally one of the most professional fire services in the world - all for the sake of ideology and a spiteful desire to destroy a trade union!
Please, Lord, deliver us from these evil and despicable men and women!
Posted by The Gray Monk at August 6, 2004 09:34 PM
Comments
Sorry to hear that things are so bad for the firefighters over there. Are the firefighters that work at the airports affected? My brother in-law works as one at Glasgow.
Posted by: skipjack at August 7, 2004 05:59 AM
Oh man... I'm sorry you have to deal with all that. We have a similar problem over here, only it doesn't involve unions and it does involve our entire country. It's called Social Security. Everybody who works in the US pays 7.5 percent of their income into Social Security, and the employer pays another 7.5% in to match it. So for everybody who works, the US government is taking 15% straight out - no deductions or tax credits of any kind apply against this tax.
It's supposed to be invested so that they can use it as a safety net, bare minimum pension to cover everybody so that even those without retirement plans have something to get by on when they reach that age. But just like your local governments, our federal government spends every dime of it every single year. So far we've been OK, but in the next ten years we're going to start to have very serious problems because of demographic changes. This has been known for almost 30 years now, but nobody's done anything about it. So we're going to get stuck in a crisis here.
*sigh*
I feel for you. I really do. Good luck avoiding a strike and good luck keeping all your programs going. Firefighting is really important work, and it's a shame that you guys are as badly funded over in Britain as your counterparts here in the States are.
Posted by: Russell Newquist at August 7, 2004 06:43 AM