Fire Service trade union the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has been left furious by Greater Manchester Fire Service plan to sack and re-employ every frontline firefighter in Greater Manchester.
In order to save money, from April 1 2017 fire service bosses will move to a new 12-hour shift system.
To do this they’ll need to sack all of their staff – using a piece of legislation called Section 188 of the Trade Union Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 – then re-engage those who agree to the new terms.
The union says this has been done without proper consultation and without agreement.
Greater Manchester brigade secretary Gary Keary said: “We are staggered that GMFRS would jeopardise relations with its workforce in this aggressive way.
“To start the process for dismissing firefighters to then simply re-engage them on an un-negotiated contract is really appalling, and a serious breach of the agreed mechanisms for industrial relations in the UK fire and rescue service.”
Around 95% of firefighters are members of the FBU.
Cuts in government spending will see the authority lose £14.4 million from its budget over the next four years.
GMFRA say they’ve already stripped as much money as they can from senior management and back office functions.
The new system will change day shifts of 10.5 hours and night shifts of 13.5 hours to two equal 12-hour shifts.
This will save the service almost £10 million.
It will also “retain 32 more firefighter jobs on the frontline than would be possible by trying to maintain our current system, providing up to 56 fire engines to our communities when they need them the most,” said Councillor David Acton, Chairman of Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Authority.
Since March GMFRA has been consulting on their money-saving ‘Corporate and Integrated Risk Management Plan 2016-2020’.
The authority say they did consult with the FBU and “their views were taken into account” in the final version of the plan.
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78% of these cuts must come in the next two years.
Central to the plan going forward is to keep all 41 of its stations open at least 12 hours a day.
Cuts in services will also directly affect response times to 999 calls.
The authority must cut 285 firefighter posts over the next four years.
In order to balance the budget, they are also planning to remove one engine permanently from Salford fire station.
In total 10 engines will be removed from service by 2020.
Some fire engines would also be replaced by smaller Tactical Response Vehicles, which carry minimal equipment and are crewed by two firefighters.
For 12 hours overnight between 10.30pm and 10.30am – what GMF refers to as “low demand periods”, some fire engines at Eccles will not be immediately available.
Changes in Salford will result in average response times rising to 5 minutes 46 seconds in the day and 6 minutes 16 seconds at night, the service has said.
But they admit they will be “less able to support large scale emergencies, which may lead to incidents escalating with increased health and economic impacts.”
In October and December 2014 and February 2015 firefighters arranged strike action in ongoing rows with the government over attacks on a pay, pensions
and working conditions.
“The scale of these government cuts has left us with no alternative and no change is not an option, said Cllr Acton.
“Cuts of £28 million over the last six years have meant a reduction of over 400 firefighters from the front line in Greater Manchester as well as significant back office cuts.
“Our ultimate aim is simple – to ensure as many fire engines as possible are available when we have the most incidents and are able to get to people as quickly as we can.
“We consulted on this and received no alternatives which would save the amount of money we need to cut.
“We have been negotiating with the FBU since January on this issue alone. We have no intention to make anyone redundant. We do need to save this money and provide the best fire and rescue service we’re able to for the communities of Greater Manchester.
GMFRA say they have run out of options: “If we cannot agree on how we do this together we will have to implement it on April 1, 2017.”
