Source: Radio New Zealand
A firefighter at a strike in Auckland in August 2022. Supplied / Jemimah Peacocke
Fire and Emergency (FENZ) is calling on the professional firefighters union to call off strike action planned for Friday.
Paid firefighters will walk off the job for an hour at midday as the two parties continue to negotiate a new collective agreement.
Areas affected by the strike are Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch, Timaru, Dunedin and Invercargill.
On Tuesday next week, the case was set to be before the Employment Relations Authority for an urgent facilitation meeting.
FENZ Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler said striking was unwarranted given its meeting to discuss the case at the ERA and that they were continuing pay talks in good faith.
Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU) national committee member David Phillips said it’d be prepared to call off the strike if the employer was willing to get around the table with meaningful solutions.
Phillips said that included problems with staffing and equipment.
“Whilst we have met with Fire and Emergency this week in bargaining, being on the bargaining team myself I can tell you it was disappointing … not surprising but disappointing.”
FENZ was offering a 5.1 percent pay increase over three years.
Stiffler said both were far apart in their offers at a meeting this week and that she was disapppointed the strike would go ahead.
Faulty brakes cause late response to Ōtara house fire
The firefighters union said a crew was seven minutes later to a house fire than it should have been because of a faulty handbrake on a truck.
It said the delay getting to the fire in the Auckland suburb of Ōtara on Wednesday morning could have been deadly if people had still been inside the home.
The union said the trip from the station to the scene should have taken just a minute, but instead it took eight because the handbrake on the truck jammed.
Phillips said it was a nightmare situation trying to get the vehicle moving while a house was going up in flames.
He said they were lucky no one was in the home at the time.
“As you can imagine if you are stuck in that house fire and you are waiting eight minutes instead of two minutes that is a long period of time and potentially a fatal period of time.”
He said it was the latest problem in an extensive list of fleet failures that the union had highlighted.
Fire and Emergency said it was hypocritical for the union to criticise an eight minute response when it was compromising public safety with a one hour strike at midday today.
Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler said the fire broke out at 12.04 in the morning and when the Ōtara crew couldn’t respond because of the brake problem, a crew was sent from Papatoetoe and arrived at 12.12. A second crew from Ōtara arrived at 12.15.
She said fire trucks were large, complicated machines and sometimes they broke down despite regular servicing.
“We acknowledge we have an ageing fleet and that is why we have a fleet replacement programme underway.
“We’ve replaced 317 trucks since Fire and Emergency New Zealand was established in 2017.
“We have 78 more trucks on order, and plan to spend approximately $20m a year for the next five years to continue to replace our older appliances,” she said.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
