LONDON faces a lack of emergency cover this Saturday, 23 October, as the Fire Brigades Union goes on strike to save all the capital’s firefighters from getting the sack.
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Fire Brigade officials admitted that rubbish fires, open ground fires, gas leaks and floods might not be covered by the drastically reduced service that is set to operate tomorrow.
Instead, the Brigade is to concentrate its slim resources on life-threatening incidents.
“We will be doing all that we can to prevent this FBU action putting Londoners at risk,” said London Fire Brigade boss Ron Dobson.
At the root of the dispute between management and union is a proposed change to shift patterns that would see firefighters work 12 hour shifts instead of the nine hour shifts currently in place.
But what really set things off and led to the 79% majority strike vote was the threat from Dobson to sack all London’s firefighters if they didn’t sign up to the new shift system. Dobson has since fanned the flames by bringing in a private ‘scab’ firm to run Saturday’s skeleton service.
“Sacking all of London’s firefighters as a way of trying to impose new contracts is the action we would expect from Victorian mill owners,” said FBU leader Matt Wrack.
“Firefighters hate going on strike, but they hate being bullied even more.”
Both sides say they want to solve the dispute by talks, but the FBU want Dobson to remove his sack threat first. If that doesn’t happen, a second one-day stoppage is pencilled in for 1 November.
