Source: Radio New Zealand
Auckland firefighters protest for better pay and work conditions. RNZ/Lucy Xia
Fire and Emergency (FENZ) says paid firefighters are “rolling the dice on people’s safety” with ongoing strike action.
But the union is hitting back and said its comments about pay offers are pedalling “rubbish” that will only galvanise their member’s resolve.
The New Zealand Professional FireFighters Union (NZPFU) had issued strike notices for one-hour strikes at 12pm on 19 and 26 December.
In a statement FENZ, said there were 22 calls for incidents during the hour that union affiliated staff walked off the job during earlier strike action on 12 December.
FENZ said 12 of the calls related to events in areas affected by strike action with half of those being alarms activated with no fire discovered.
It said a small backyard fire in Kawerau was extinguished by a volunteers crew and another call was a small gas leak.
It said St John’s ambulance responded to two medical emergencies – in accordance with strike contingency plans – while the remaining two calls were reports of smoke which did not result in a fire.
Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler said she was disappointed by the announcement of further strikes before the end of the year.
“This is rolling the dice on people’s safety. We’ve urged the NZPFU repeatedly to call off their strikes because there is no good reason for continuing to put the community in harm’s way while both parties are in facilitation,” Stiffler said.
Stiffler thanked the country’s 11,800 volunteers for being available to respond to calls during the strike periods.
FENZ and the NZPFU have been in bargaining talks for a collective employment agreement for paid firefighters since July last year.
This week marked the first two bargaining sessions overseen by Employment Relations Authority appointed facilitators tasked with breaking the impasse between the two sides of the wage and conditions dispute.
“Attending independent facilitation with the Authority is the next logical step in coming to an agreement and we will participate in good faith with the NZPFU. We hope the facilitation process introduces some realism into discussions,” Stiffler said.
She said the union’s latest settlement proposal was three times higher than FENZ’s previous offer put forward before the facilitated bargaining process began.
Stiffler said FENZ had offered a 6.2 percent pay increase over the next three years.
She said the amount was “fair, sustainable and in line with other settlements across the public service”.
NZPFU national secretary Wattie Watson said that figure was “rubbish” as there had not been any pay rise in the nearly 18 months leading up to the current negotiations.
“In actual fact the period of time is four and a half years for our members because they haven’t had a pay increase,” Watson said.
Watson said FENZ claims of public endangerment during the hour long strike periods was ignoring the problems caused by understaffing and a lack of adequate resourcing of the service.
“Every day there is real risk to the community. FENZ gets a warning about this one hour,” Watson said.
“Every other hour of every other day they don’t know because they don’t have enough staff to keep the stations open and they don’t have enough truck.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
