News

Whilst there hasn’t been an update notice lately, this shouldn’t be taken to mean that there hasn’t been anything happening with the dispute. Again, there have been far too many instances of members doing their bit to mention all of […]

Mr MacDougall AC AFSM has outdone himself with his latest “Message from the Commissioner” concerning the D&D dispute. In fact it’s so good that we’ve taken the unusual step of attaching his notice to ours, just in case you missed […]

Meeting with the Minister We met last night with the Minister for Emergency Services, Bob Debus. Put simply, he didn’t give any ground and neither did we. We did at least both agree that we should continue to talk, which […]

Commissioner MacDougall has this morning issued a direction that all firefighters are “to comply with all instructions given to them by their superior officers”. We suspect the primary target of this direction to be our Union’s relieving bans. This was […]

The Union’s officials have continued to monitor the measures which were introduced by the members attending last Friday’s stop-work meetings, and to consider the feedback provided by members since that time. Accordingly, the instruction at point 2. Four Stations to […]

The Union met with Government representatives this afternoon for what was always going to be a last ditch meeting prior to tomorrow’s IRC proceedings before Justice Boland. However today merely confirmed what we suspected all along – the Government never […]

We have been negotiating with the Department for close to 12 months now over staffing for the new Hazmat vans. The fact is that there was no consultation whatsoever with our Union on this question prior to the introduction of […]

The dispute returned to the Industrial Relations Commission at 10am today. The Government explained its final position, which we regret to say really hasn’t changed at all from July last year. We of course again flatly rejected it.

Last week, during negotiations over the D&D dispute the Department confirmed that in the first stages of their proposal for a mandatory health and fitness standard approximately 500 permanent firefighters will “move through the system”. When pressed on what that […]

The Department has recently attempted to enforce its telephone usage policy, as promulgated in In Orders 2000/22, by serving some members with STD bills for their station. However, there has been no formal agreement reached with the Union on what […]

The Union Office has recently become aware of various memos from certain Regional Commanders concerning award provisions relating to Personal/Carers Leave. In particular, whether the Department requires members to produce a medical certificate or statutory declaration in support of such […]

Two important meetings took place this week, the first to agree upon the latest series of costings prepared by the independent actuary and the second, which was held yesterday, to work through those agreed figures. From our perspective it now […]