The Department and Union representatives will meet tomorrow and form a COVID-19 working group. We will report on that as soon as there is news.
The FBEU is putting in place every measure we can to flatten the curve in terms of our operations:
We are encouraging members with industrial enquiries to please use the online contact form and limit calls to the office to situations where it is very urgent (e.g. being stood down, or an issue relating to a code red). The online contact form is here: https://fbeu.net/contact-us/industrial-enquiry/
Currently we are asking our organsing team to postpone their scheduled meetings to your stations as we are concerned about them going place-to-place for both their own health and for yours. Firefighters have banned community outreach work and it would be remiss of us to not put in place similar rules for our organisers.
Wherever possible we are encouraging staff to work from home.
We are making alternative plans for delegate training over the coming days, it is likely face-to-face training will be postponed and alternative plans put in place.
We anticipate that May Day events will be cancelled and we are making alternative plans about this important day of solidarity. We will update members ASAP with these plans.
We will continue to assess the situation for all members and staff and make further announcements/bans as required.
No Medical work for Permanent Firies
Last week we had concerns raised around permanent members being informed about some possible medical training.
The union can confirm that there is no medical training for permanent fire fighters and the new ‘bystander’ training starting this week is an agreed mental health program that numerous stations trialled last year and highly recommended. This has somewhere along the line (after our approval) had some medical branding attached to it which was a mistake (and in bad faith) and the Department have been informed, admitted the error and are correcting it.
The Union’s position on any medical work for our permanent members remains unchanged and regardless of what new acronym (MFR, EFR, EAD) the Department call medical work will have no impact on our position.
Medical work for permanents firefighters is not agreed to by the union. Our current position can be found here. Our position regarding any attempt to make us do this without approval voted on at the 2019 AGM can be found here.
