Firefighters say strikes are only way country can avoid ‘catastrophe’

'We will soon be facing a catastrophe.'

At this point, Lee Hunter, 44, struggles to remember what he and his colleagues haven’t had to miss out on because of work.

‘We give up family Christmases, family parties, we can be working on our children’s birthdays,’ the father of two says.

But he wouldn’t change it for the world. No, Hunter tells Metro.co.uk, he and so many other firefighters won’t be quitting anytime soon.

These days, though, sticking around is coming with a price – a literal price, Hunter says: ‘Many are struggling to survive on the wage we earn.’

This month, Tory MP for Bassetlaw, Brendan Clarke-Smith, suggested struggling fire service staff reliant on food banks (as an increasing number are these days) ‘learn how to budget’.

‘There will always be people with individual situations who occasionally need help, regardless of income,’ he tweeted, ‘but to use it as a go-to example every time is getting a little absurd now.’

Hunter knows fellow fire officers who use food banks – and he could soon be one of them.

‘I have seen my own bills increase tremendously, including food bills,’ he says. ‘Whilst my own family have not yet used a foodbank, we do use a local food hub, where a subscription fee allows us to purchase items that would cost more than the fee. This type of community initiative is vital for us.

‘It keeps food bills lower at a time when other bills are rising. We have made conscious decisions not to use the heating as much and whilst our children did not see any change at Christmas, my partner and I did decide not to buy presents for each other.’

Backed by unions and tired by years of low wage growth, a laundry list of workers – from nurses and barristers to brewery bottlers – are striking in the UK.

Industrial action is often seen as a last resort by workers to get demands for better pay in the face of soaring inflation and the cost-of-living crisis met.

Now it seems the fire service could be next. The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) is balloting its members until January 30 to decide whether to join the picket lines.

A trainee firefighter earns just shy of £25,000, while a fully-trained firefighter – one who has to enter burning buildings to battle blazes – earns £32,000.

Control operators, who identify where the fire is taking place and support those on the other end of the line, start on just £20,000. Their annual pay goes up £5,000 after five years of service.

Adding to their list of woes, firefighters are more than three times as likely to die from certain cancers due to exposure to toxic chemicals, a January study found.

The last national strike held by the fire and rescue service was in 2003, when staff fought for a 39% pay increase, with the FBU bagging a 16% top-up.

In May last year, firefighters were offered a 2% pay rise even though inflation was at 9.1%. Now it’s nearly 11%. The FBU says the 2% pay offer followed a real-term pay cut of around 12% between 2009 and 2021.

But demand hasn’t gone down. In fact, FBU members told Metro.co.uk, it’s gone up, especially amid the coronavirus pandemic and as climate change makes blistering heat waves and floods a reality.

Hunter feels the service has to strike, a desire ignited after the FBU rejected a 5% pay offer in November – that 2% offered earlier was an ‘insult’, he adds.

The 5% pay rise would have come with some terms and conditions – it wouldn’t have been centrally funded, so cutbacks would’ve had to have been made for it. ‘It’s insulting,’ he adds again.

Though the government is not directly responsible for pay negotiations it directly provides a significant chunk of the funding for fire services across the country.

The government claims the wage bill for the UK fire and rescue service is £2.25 billion – each 1% pay rise for firefighters could cost £22,500,000.

Yet the FBU points to the tens of millions in unpaid taxes as well as the more than £30,000,000 that would be raised if ministers applied a 1% wealth tax, closed up inheritance tax loopholes and other policies around the wealthiest Brits.

‘FBU members do not want to strike. It hurts us financially and it takes us away from doing the job we love,’ Hunter adds.

‘However, we have been put in this position by a government who have left us no other option. They have repeatedly attacked our pay, they have repeatedly attacked our terms and conditions.’

Lisa Hicks, 48, has more than 20 years of experience between working in London and at the Hampshire Fire Rescue Service.

After realising a career in architecture wasn’t for her, she joined what she now calls the ‘best job’ in the world.

Then the pandemic happened. An untold number of fire officers died on the frontlines of Covid-19.

‘The pandemic shined a light on the people that keep the country going – “key workers” they called us. You cannot be safe as a citizen in the UK without them,’ Hicks says.

‘Firefighters went above and beyond during the pandemic. We were moving dead bodies in the mortuaries. We worked in intensive care units, assisting nursing staff and driving ambulances.

‘To be exposed to that much trauma on a regular basis… we will soon be facing a catastrophe.’

‘Morale is at the lowest I’ve ever seen it with how undervalued we are,’ she adds.

‘We will always come when you phone us. We will do our best to help you and your families. But it’s getting harder. A lot harder.

‘But we will soon have a recruitment crisis because as much as everybody loves the job, if you can’t afford to do it, you’ve got to look after your family.’

Among those voting to strike is Gordon Nimmo, 43. He joined the brigade a decade ago as a retained firefighter at Cupar Fire Station.

‘I joined as I wanted to do something that was interesting, different and as I was settled in the town – married with kids,’ he says. ‘This allowed me to put something back into the community that I was living in.’

He started working as a full-time firefighter at the Glenrothes Fire Station in 2019.

But something Nimmo came to learn – and fast – is that for a life-saving service, there’s only so much that can be done with such little funding.

‘We cannot help if we do not have enough personnel in the back of the appliance,’ he says, adding that one in five fire service jobs have been cut since 2021, or about 11,500 people.

Of the 43 fire brigades in England, 41 have lost at least 10% of their funding due to more than a decade of Tory government cuts.

As the money dries up, so has the number of staff. Fire services workers in England plummeted by 21%, or 9,444 workers, in the decade to 2020.

‘We are in a role where we respond to emergencies, we cannot do that role effectively if we are ill-equipped and under-resourced,’ Nimmo adds.

Hunter first joined the fire services in 2003 at the Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service (MFRS). Three years later, he was training to become an operational firefighter.

‘Becoming a firefighter was something I had wanted to do since I was a child, I had always held firefighters in the highest regard. That has not changed,’ he says.

‘I have seen the very best there is in people, who do the most extraordinary things, simply to help others in their time of need.’

Industrial action was something Hunter never imagined all those years ago he’d be doing, but now he’s worried soon he and other workers won’t even have that option.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, amid the latest wave of labour unrest led by ambulance workers, nurses, rail staff and more, proposed anti-strike legislation.

The law would empower employers in key sectors to be able to sack striking workers and sue unions if so-called ‘minimum service levels’ aren’t met.

‘The right to withdraw labour is a fundamental human right,’ Hunter says.

This government have already shown that they have utter disdain for human rights on several occasions (Windrush, Grenfell, Rwanda Policy, et cetera) and they continue to do so with this latest attack.

‘For me, if they continue to try and push this through, there can be only one response,’ he adds, ‘more strike action.’

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