THE firefighters are ''angry'' that the Government expects them to
take the same pay increase as other public employees. The 1.5% limit has
already provoked resentment among local authority workers, and the
firefighters' leader says that strike action already seems
''inevitable''. Fortunately, the Fire Brigades Union's annual conference
is still two months away and the usual date for a pay settlement is
November, which may afford sufficient time for discussion. The trouble
concerns the pay formula agreed after the last firemen's strike in 1977.
The union wants more than the bare 1.5% because it does not meet what
was previously agreed. The formula achieved after the last strike in
1977-8 may not offer them very much more than that this time round, for
wage awards everywhere have been falling fast -- it merely promises to
put them firmly among the top quartile of male earnings -- but it is
what was negotiated and it seems foolish of the Government to provoke a
collision by abandoning it unilaterally. The union thinks it a matter of
principle.
The Home Secretary, the combative Mr Kenneth Clarke, always seems keen
for a scrap. He has been adamant that the local authorities must find
any extra cash needed from their existing resources but since their
hands are firmly tied by the inflexible pay norm it is easy to see why
the union scents a strike without actually wanting to stage one. Mr
Clarke may be counting on the way in which mass unemployment has
undermined workers' confidence in strikes for more pay. His opinion may
have to be tested by events, but if part of his calculation includes the
use of the armed forces and their emergency fire-fighting equipment, he
could be badly wrong. The forces' manpower, especially in the Army, is
already stretched, and the equipment, the so-called Green Goddesses that
were considered obsolescent 15 years ago, must have deteriorated since.
The Government has landed itself with a pay policy, possibly without
considering all its implications. In this case that policy involves
rejecting an agreement that guaranteed industrial peace in a vital area
of public service. The last firefighters' strike ushered in a sour mood
among public service workers that culminated in the famous winter of
discontent of 1978-9. Then, too, a Government under financial and
economic pressure sought to impose an unrealistic pay norm. History
looks set to repeat itself.
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