Manchester firefighters need solidarity action!

Submitted by Anon on 20 May, 2004 - 9:00

Nineteen firefighters in Manchester have been sent home without pay in what is increasingly looking like a management lock-out in a bid to break the Fire Brigades' Union before it holds a recall conference next month to consider a strike ballot.

Two weeks ago the FBU conference was controversially suspended to allow delegates to return to branches and consult on a possible strike ballot, following management's failure to pay the second stage of a three stage pay deal, and their insistence on adding on new changes in working practices not in the original deal. That deal, which was unpopular with many firefighters anyway, gave considerable ground to the employers in return for three pay rises of 3 - 4 %. But the second rise is now months overdue, and management have come back in the meantime with demands to end the practice of stand-down time, whereby crews can have a certain amount of each shift reserved, in which they will only be asked to attend emergency calls.

Management want to squeeze more work out of each firefighter, as a prelude to cutting numbers and cutting fire stations, and they want to change the shift pattern away from the four-watch rotation, which is widely credited with helping to hold union organisation together in the fire service whilst other public sector unions have declined significantly over the past twenty years.

Now management thought they had the FBU beaten, following the collapse of the "30k" pay campaign, and the acceptance of the deal. So just before the FBU conference they came back for more - demanding the removal of stand-down time as an extra condition of the pay rise. It nearly worked, too, as the FBU EC tried its usual tactics of offering a compromise deal and meantime talking up a fight, but the management wanted a clear win and rejected the compromise. The EC then used the opportunity to close down conference, thus avoiding criticism over their handling of last year's dispute, the thorny issue of Labour Party affiliation and calls for them to back off from a witch hunt against supporters of the new rank-and-file body, Grassroots FBU. All these issues will now not be debated until mid-June.

The conference agreed, in the emergency motion from the EC which suspended it, that the union would withdraw from the implementation of the 2003 agreement. Firefighters in several areas, including the whole of the Welsh Fire Service and Salford in Manchester, took this to mean no crewing of new Incident Response Unit vehicles, brought in as part of new anti-terrorist measures and covered by the new working practices agreement. In Wales, the decision not to crew IRU's seems to have been accepted by management without comment, But two watches in Salford, and the Station Commander, together with other firefighters at at least two other nearby stations, have been sent home without pay for refusing to crew the IRUs. GMC management have not treated everyone equally, picking and choosing who they will ask to ride the IRU, so that they can give the impression that the dispute is a walkout by a militant minority, not a lock-out.

The FBU's response has been slow and insufficient. The EC issued a statement criticising the employers for refusing to compromise, despite the fact that most firefighters don't want a compromise anyway - they want their pay for the agreement which employers have already signed up to, or, in many cases, they don't even want the agreement. Likewise, the EC have given authority to the FBU in Manchester to ballot for action, completely missing the point that the firefighters in question were suspended for following union conference policy, and that this, therefore, is a national dispute.

By contrast, the response of the FBU rank and file has been excellent. Firefighters around the country have taken spontaneous action, including work-to-rule and refusing to work anything other than 999 calls. This is inspiring stuff, and much more significant than the last rush of 'unofficial action' which was led 'under the table' by prominent FBU officials. This action is not being led by anyone, except the FBU members themselves, who rightly recognise the attack on the Salford crews as a direct threat to each and every one of them.

The problem is that such action, while widespread, is limited. Unofficial work-to-rules are just as illegal as unofficial strikes, but nowhere near as effective. The 999-only action usually results in management cutting pay, either partially or completely, leaving firefighters still working, but working for nothing. Sustained 999-only would result in vehicles and equipment eventually going off the run when it was not getting maintained or checked, but the chances of action lasting that long are slim, and management seem prepared to wait it out. They have sent home the same groups of firefighters when they returned for duty on their next watch, but no-one else.

If management don't want to spread the dispute, the rank and file of the union must do. The attack on the Salford watches is an attack on the union itself, and needs a co-ordinated national response. The EC have failed to provide one, instead arguing that firefighters should wait for the recall conference in four weeks' time, after which there will be a national ballot. But the conference motion, which the EC proposed, is what put the Salford firefighters at risk, and they should now be backed up by the full strength of the union.

Some regional EC members, and regional committees have issued advice to members about the conference decision on suspending the agreement, others haven't. As a result, IRUs are off the run in some areas, and working normally elsewhere. To further complicate matters, two of the usually militant regions, Merseyside and London, are not at the forefront of the action this time, and some London activists are being negative about spreading unofficial action - mostly, it seems, because they're aggreived that their dire warnings about the agreement itself were not listened to. While such an "I told you so" feeling is understandable, it's really not helping the situation now, in which the maximum possible unity of the rank and file is needed, if a counterweight to the EC's wait-for-conference position is to be maintained.

And what of the union left? Red Watch, the bulletin produced mostly by supporters of the SWP,has issued a leaflet calling for the EC to endorse the action so far taken, and arguing that the unofficial action strengthens the campaign for a yes vote in next month's ballot, but they stop short of actively calling for a spread of unofficial action, hedging their bets with several ifs - "If members are prepared to walk..."

But Grassroots FBU, the new rank and file grouping which is the target for Gilchrist's witch-hunt haven't produced any material since the conference. It's possible that there is disagreement amongst them about the way forward, since some Grassroots FBU activists were opposed to the suspension of conference, whilst some of its most visible supporters were involved in the London region decision to withdraw opposition to the EC's emergency motion. Since conference, London (where Grassroots is strongest) has been noticeably hostile to the idea of unofficial action.

So there appears to be no-one in the FBU prepared to make a call for co-ordinating and stepping up the unofficial action, even though there are thousands of firefighters around the country facing cuts in their pay for refusing to carry out routine duties, and there are nineteen FBU members in Manchester now facing a second shift at home without pay for sticking to the union's policy.

It's clear that there is a mood for resistance to the latest round of the employers' attacks. Several firefighters report having re-joined the union recently specifically to be involved in a fightback, having left in protest at Gilchrist's inept handling of the original dispute. Others who at conference said there was no mood for action amongst members are now involved in 999-only protests and other partial stoppages. Things change quickly, and just as the tempo has quickened in the two weeks since the conference was suspended, they could easily go quiet in the next two weeks while members wait for leadership from the EC - leadership which it is clear is not going to come.

Someone needs to take the initiative, and it should probably be the Grassroots FBU. Facing a witch-hunt already, they can either go quiet themselves and hope that their loyalty to the EC in this time of difficulty will be rewarded when conference re-convenes, or they can up the ante, and offer the union's membership an alternative strategy. A Grassroots FBU meeting, for instance, called in Manchester in the next few days, to which all stations and watches were invited to send representatives, could form the nucleus of an 'unofficial strike committee', and help members to decide whether they have the momentum to step up the action to defend their colleagues in Salford.

Waiting for the EC really doesn't seem to be an option. They have already had many, many opportunities to show their leadesrship abilities throughout this protracted pay dispute and have fallen at every hurdle. It is time for the rank-and-file firefighters, who have broadly shown fantastic solidarity and good fighting instincts to get themselves organised and coordinated and take control of their dispute into their own hands.

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