August 28, 2008
Minister for Emergency Services Nathan Rees has recently been struggling to come to terms with what exactly his Government has in mind for the states professional fire service. The dilemma for Minister Rees arose after the Commissioner filed a document advising the Industrial Relations Commission that stations would be closed and firefighter numbers reduced if the courts award more than the 2.5% per year on offer to firefighters.
The Minister was forced to issue a series of public commitments stating that no firefighters would be sacked and no fire stations closed as a result of the Union’s wage claim. While the Minister has been busy ruling out the permanent closure of fire stations he has now spelt out clearly his proposal that fire stations will be closed temporarily. The position the Minister is now advocating is essentially the same position served up by Commissioner Greg Mullins in January 2008 in respect of “taking stations off line”.
To support this position the Minister has been writing to members of parliament across NSW informing them that rather than employing additional firefighters or recalling firefighters to duty – brigades will be taken off line. With retained firefighters paid an average of just $9000 per year across NSW the decision not to close fire brigades will have marginal cost impact on the states budget.
The Union is continuing to roll out its political lobbying campaign and is continuing to receive responses from politicians to our request for support. FBEU members are now finding that most ALP members of parliament have been briefed up by the Ministers office and simply do not understand while it is so important that fire brigades should not be allowed to close either permanently or temporarily. It is now vitally important that all ALP members of parliament are visited by local firefighters and are informed why it is so important that brigades are not shut, why response times can be so crucial to saving lives and why we don’t want our wages and conditions cut.
Members should now take the attached letter from Minister Rees and ensure that the proposal to ‘temporarily’ close fire stations is ruled out by every local MP and that each of these people provide a written commitment stating that this will not happen.
(See website for details)
With new leadership of the ALP the NSW Government will now be seeking to paint Premier Rees as a new leader with a fresh approach to politics and a new way to fix problems across NSW. The FBEU too will be stepping up its campaign to keep fire stations open permanently and temporarily. Every FBEU member now needs to take the new Premiers letter up to each local Member of Parliament and demand that the man now running NSW publicly commits to maintain crewing levels at every brigade throughout the state in the same way every other Premier has since 1995.
A final decision in relation to our wages will not be delivered until Friday 19th September and at this stage the Union will release the full details of our new Awards.
Simon Flynn
State Secretary
Minister for Emergency Services Nathan Rees has recently been struggling to come to terms with what exactly his Government has in mind for the states professional fire service. The dilemma for Minister Rees arose after the Commissioner filed a document advising the Industrial Relations Commission that stations would be closed and firefighter numbers reduced if the courts award more than the 2.5% per year on offer to firefighters.
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August 22, 2008
With mass meetings across NSW now completed close to 1000 FBEU members have considered the progress in the Unions wages and conditions campaign. Each of the members present has heard a report on progress in the negotiations and voted overwhelmingly (95%) to support the recommendation put forward by the Unions leadership.
Read more…
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August 21, 2008
The clock is now ticking toward the start of the Special Wage Case set down for Monday 25th August.
Read more…
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August 19, 2008
The campaign to get the NSW Government to remove the most offensive parts of its attack on our wages has continued to roll out across NSW. Over twenty five ALP local MP’s have now been fronted by delegations of firefighters angry at the threat to close fire stations and sack firefighters if the court grants us any more than the 2.5%, 2.75% and 2.75% on offer. The latest and most spectacular of these has been the Illawarra firefighters approach to the Treasurer Michael Costa.
Read more…
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August 14, 2008
No one has enjoyed the Department sledging the Union, playing the man and not the ball and banging on about the weakness of the Unions wage claim over the last eight months. The claim that firefighters were somehow responsible for the Department building Bathurst fire station backwards and the claim that Union bans were responsible for FBEU members getting booked when under lights and sirens when no one had filled in paperwork or been booked in these circumstances since traffic cameras were first introduced.
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August 14, 2008
Inside this notice:
- Details of the upcoming SGM
- Full SGM Agenda Read more…
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August 12, 2008
In an outrageously provocative move the Government has now seriously escalated our wage dispute by pointing a gun at the head of the Industrial Relations Commission. In an unprecedented move the Government has said that if the IRC hands down an increase greater than the 2.5% per year brigades will be shut and firefighters laid off.
Read more…
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August 8, 2008
With the member for Bathurst Gerard Martin now publicly backing the Union’s campaign against cuts to our wages and conditions pressure has continued to mount on local MP’s to stand up for the professional firefighters of NSW. This week delegations of FBEU members have visited Graham West the member for Campbelltown, Verity Firth the member for Balmain, Michael Daley the member for Maroubra and Barbra Perry the member for Auburn.
Over 150 members have also rallied outside the electorate office of the Minister for Emergency Services Nathan Rees calling on him to directly intervene in the dispute and make the Department withdraw its attack on our hours of work, training and promotional systems and our Operational Support positions. The rally was enormously successful and drew in members from as far a field as Newcastle and Wollongong. Members in attendance at the rally have called for more direct action targeting MP’s and the Union is now putting together a plan to achieve just this.
Each of these politicians have been fronted by local media and asked to come out in support of our claim. Local newspapers across the state have been briefed up prior to delegations meeting MP’s and they have localized the Union’s campaign. The next stage of the political lobbying involves encouraging MPs to put their platitudes for the work of FBEU members into public statements and letters committing them to support us.
The latest politician to do so has been Noreen Hay the member for Wollongong. Noreen Hay has put together a media release locking herself in behind local Illawarra firefighters. Clearly following on from the very public support the FBEU has been offered by MP for Bathurst Gerard Martin – Noreen Hay has gone further and claimed that the proposals put forward by the Department are so extreme that the Government simply couldn’t have been aware of them.
The ‘Special Wage Case’ is now set to start in the Industrial Relations Commission on Monday August 25th. The case will run for eight consecutive days and finish on September 3rd. The Union will be encouraging members to attend every day the court sits and to hear exactly what the Department has to say about our claim and why our wages should be held down to 2.5%, 2.75% and 2.75% over three years.
At 4pm this afternoon the Union office was delivered a box of 1600 pages of evidence and affidavits that the Department has now filed in the IRC to substantiate its claims against our conditions. The Union’s officials will be spending most of the weekend reading through the Department’s counter claims and building our counter arguments. The Union’s State Committee will also be meeting early next week to consider how best to respond.
Simon Flynn
State Secretary
With the member for Bathurst Gerard Martin now publicly backing the Union’s campaign against cuts to our wages and conditions pressure has continued to mount on local MP’s to stand up for the professional firefighters of NSW. This week delegations of FBEU members have visited Graham West the member for Campbelltown, Verity Firth the member for Balmain, Michael Daley the member for Maroubra and Barbra Perry the member for Auburn.
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August 6, 2008
After months and months of negotiations, bans, court appearances, a television advertising campaign and national media coverage of our dispute, a strike and two stop-work meetings we finally seem to be making progress in defending our conditions and wining an increase in wages. The Union has now met with the Department, the Premiers Office and representatives from Unions NSW on three of the last six working days.
While progress has been painfully slow the Department and indeed the Premiers Office have at last started to take our claim seriously. The previous hardline from the Department on our rosters, Operational Support jobs, training and promotional systems seems to have substantially weakened. We won’t actually know what the Department now wants to do to our Award until the close of business on Friday – the date by which it must provide evidence and affidavits in support of the 2.5%, 2.75% and 2.75% offer.
While all of this has been happening the Union has continued to roll out its political lobbying strategy and by the end of this week we will have arranged for over twenty delegations of rank and file firefighters to meet with local Members of Parliament. While most MPs have been broadly supportive of our ‘Community Safety _ Not For Sale’ campaign, some have been outspoken in their support for the states professional firefighters.
As late as this afternoon the Labor Party member for Bathurst Gerard Martin has announced in the media his strident support for our campaign. Gerard Martin has now made his views very clear to those running Government in that he will not sit back and allow the Department to cut firefighters wages or reduce services to fund an increase.
Gerard Martin may be the first of the twenty Labor Party MP’s we have approached to come out publicly and back our claims, but he will most certainly not be the last. The Union is now redoubling efforts to have the Department pull the most offensive and down right dangerous elements of its claim on our conditions. We will now be looking to have those MP’s still wavering on support for our claims get off the fence and publicly throw their support behind Gerard Martin and a fair go for firies.
Simon Flynn
State Secretary
After months and months of negotiations, bans, court appearances, a television advertising campaign and national media coverage of our dispute, a strike and two stop-work meetings we finally seem to be making progress in defending our conditions and wining an increase in wages. The Union has now met with the Department, the Premiers Office and representatives from Unions NSW on three of the last six working days.
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