Row breaks out between Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service and FBU over crewing proposals - The Redditch Standard

Row breaks out between Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service and FBU over crewing proposals

Redditch Editorial 21st Feb, 2018   0

A ROW has broken out between the Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) about a proposed new crewing system, writes Rhys Goodfellow.

The changes, put forward at a Fire Authority meeting last Wednesday after 12 months of extensive consultation, propose more full-time firefighter posts on 42-hour contracts and less supervisory management roles.

Presently firefighters working on the day crew system are paid for 42 hours per week but work 35 of those at the station and in the community, with the other seven spent ‘on-call’ at home.

But Hereford and Worcester Fire and Rescue Service (HWFRS) bosses want firefighters to work those seven hours on station or in the community as well which, they say, will increase the crewing levels at those stations.




That will, they say, mean that the full-time fire engines will have crews of five rather than four with no extra cost to the service.

But the FBU claimed Hereford and Worcester Fire Authority had ‘granted permission for all firefighters to be sacked in two weeks if an agreement on the new system could not be reached and then offered re-employment with inferior contracts and longer working hours’.


Barry Downey, regional FBU representative, said: “This is a deplorable thing for the authority to have done.

“How can we negotiate in good faith with this threat hanging over our heads?

“They (the Fire Authority) have voted to punish firefighters, to make them feel more insecure at work.”

The FBU said it hoped the Fire Authority would defer from the decision in order to allow negotiations between the service and the union to continue in good faith.

HWFRS said the current agreement struck between itself and the FBU met all of the service’s priorities and following Wednesday’s meeting the Fire Authority has supported its implementation through a collective agreement before March 1. Should an agreement not be reached by then a process to ‘make a start to new contracts’ would begin.

Chief Fire Officer at HWFRS Nathan Travis said: “I appreciate we are asking staff to work differently, but we are also prepared to support them through a transitional period and even invest any early savings into those support arrangements.

“If the local brigade committee accept, which I hope they do, we have agreed to phase in the changes over a reasonable period, but we need to realise that increasing the crewing levels without working differently is not possible.”

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