Local retained fire fighters determine to "take stand" in strike action

Retained fire fighters resuming strike action tomorrow want to return to saving lives but are determined to "take a stand” according to an Ashbourne union rep.

The Retained Fire Service is a 2,000 strong part-time workforce that provides fire and first responder emergency services across the country.

Siptu members employed as Retained Fire Services firefighters have been engaged in industrial action in recent weeks due to what the trade union describes as a “staffing crisis which threatens this vital community resource”.

Plans for all-out strike action were suspended last month in order to allow for the Labour Court intervention.

However, the trade union last week said it was “disappointed” with the recommendations made by the Labour Court and that they anticipated members would reject the document in a ballot.

It was confirmed on Monday that 82% of Siptu firefighters rejected the Labour Court recommendations.

As a result, the suspension on strike action will now be lifted and the strike will commence at every fire station from Wednesday, 26 July.

Acting Meath Union Representative Ciaran Finn said “it is the last place they want to be,”he added:

“They just didn’t acknowledge what we were looking for, it was a totally different road they wanted to go down and it was going to solve nothing in the long run. They were saying we could take 20 weeks off and that would include weekends so it is not as good as it sounds. At the end of the day it would have resulted in a reduction in pay and we are struggling to keep people as it is and any reduction in pay would make life worse for us. We are moving on to the third level of strike at a minute past midday on Wednesday.”

The service is at “a stand off" with management with a contingency plan still remaining to be confirmed.

"We have said that we would attend life threatening calls and would leave it to management to assess was life threatening calls are. They are after giving us a very broad remit of what they consider life threatening calls but we are not going to argue with that side of things but we do want three fire engines going to every call on the basis that it is life threatening, at the moment they are refusing to do that. We are also not using our radios to communicate with the command centre, we are using the phones to do it instead and they are having issues with that, so at the moment it is at somewhat of a stand off.

"It is looking like they want us to strike but they won’t let us do anything to strike. It’s the last place that we want to be but we have to make a stand at this stage.”

Ciaran says pay and conditions need to be addressed to encourage more people into the service. He added:

"We want to go back to what we love doing but there are 220,00 people in need in Meath there are only 76 of us, we are burnt out we can;t keep going at that level. We just need more people in the team to support us, we need to increase numbers to a reasonable number. They were originally offering us 12 in the labor court but if someone is off sick or off on holidays you are straight down numbers immediately."

"Greater investment means we are keeping the skills in the service. If the last deal had have gone through, I honestly believe there would have been a mass exit from the service and it takes years to retrain somebody.”

Fire fighters are willing to put up a fight for a better working environment according to the union rep who said:

"There are an awful lot of determined people, I never thought I’d see the day where fire fighters were willing to close stations but it has just gone too far at this stage. We have sat and watched for the past two decades people being able to work from home, people getting more time off, extra bank holidays and maternity and paternity leave coming in and we don’t really get any of that. We can take it but we do so at the expense of our colleagues. We last lost out on every benefit has come in in the last two decades to every other work force. "