Movement for a Socialist Future

‘The government may regard the firefighters’ union in the same way as Thatcher regarded the miners’ union under Arthur Scargill. Our struggle has that much national importance,’ says Mick Shergold, London regional secretary of the Fire Brigades Union in an interview with Socialist Future.

How far behind has firefighters’ pay fallen?

In the new group of workers we’re compared with, we have fallen behind the average earnings by £100 a week. We were all shocked when we discovered this. This decline has been going on for years and this is reflected in the fact that for the last six years we have had resolutions at the FBU conference on pay seeking to align us with different groups of workers or re-evaluate the pay formula which has been in place since 1977. Each time the resolutions on pay came up the time for action was not right. But this year was exactly the right time. Because everybody in the last 12 or 24 months before this campaign had been really feeling the pinch, particularly in London. On a personal level, I have a modest house, a modest mortgage and an 18-month old son and I’m overdrawn every month. It’s indecent that you have to struggle to survive. It’s obscene that firefighters find themselves in this situation.

We are told that many firefighters have to do other jobs to make ends meet?

There are no figures. But firefighters officially have to register when they want to do other work outside of their shifts. The most recent figure we have is that 1,500 London firefighters are registered and I suspect that there are many more who do other jobs and are not registered. They do it out of necessity. The vote for action of around nine to one reflects the feeling about our pay levels. In my 20 years as a firefighter I’ve never seen the members so determined as they are now.

Why has the FBU decided to boycott the review into pay and conditions?

Some people take the view that the review is reasonable and we should be reasonable people. However, just look at the comments made by one of the members of the inquiry, Sir Toby Young, who in a private conversation with our general secretary said that “you will not achieve what you want” and that this “inquiry will not deliver”. He said that before the inquiry had actually started work, before its terms of reference were drawn up. The whole idea of this inquiry being independent, being fair, is totally ludicrous and a sham. The inquiry is in fact an opportunity for the government to intervene in this dispute. We all know what the outcome of the inquiry will be. It will be modernisation for the fire service. We don’t need another inquiry to know we need to modernise or that our pay is low. If we sign up to the inquiry, we effectively sign up to its conclusions, so in one way it’s a trap.

Hasn’t the government already interfered by preventing a higher offer being made to you through the employers?

That’s the whole absurd thing. As everybody knows, our employers are not directly the government but the local authorities. In the early stages of this campaign, the national employers went to the government to seek release of funding. The government’s view at the time was that the claim had to be settled between the employers and the FBU, which we entirely agree with. However, what we then discovered was that the employers were prepared to make an offer of around 15-16% but the government then intervened prior to the meeting and said they couldn’t make the offer. So there they are on the one hand saying it’s not appropriate for the government to intervene and then preventing the employers from making an offer. The interim offer of 4% is just an insult and I feel that this government has just lost so much respect. They have the biggest majority we’ve seen in a long time. But their arrogance, the way that they deal with that massive majority, the fact that they haven’t listened to the people who put them there is going to backfire on them. We’re a long way down the road on shutting the lid of the coffin on this Labour government.

In what sense is the FBU campaign also about defending public services as a whole?

In the wider political sense our campaign is about having decent public services. Some people have asked me whether firefighters should be made a special case above other public sector workers. The answer is simple: no, it’s not fair that nurses and other public sector workers’ wages are as low as they are. We are equal with nurses and ambulance crews and other workers in what we do and they should all be paid a decent amount of money. What the firefighters are doing is leading that charge to bring some decency to public sector wage levels. I hope that other public sector workers will embark on similar campaigns as ours. The outcome of this claim is important in a number of ways. There are a lot of people watching what happens. The government may regard the firefighters’ union in the same way as Thatcher regarded the miners’ union under Arthur Scargill. Our struggle has that much national importance.

Doesn’t the FBU need the practical support of other workers in pursuing its claim rather than other groups of trade unionists waiting to see the outcome?

What is difficult for workers in this country is that we’re not used to doing this. We’ve seen a resurgence of trade unionism. Suddenly we’re back in the news. We saw it in the 1980s, it was almost gone in the 1990s and we are not used as a nation to standing up for ourselves. This is the biggest and most serious campaign I’ve been involved in the FBU. It’s the most important and has the most significance politically. Other workers see it. There is a case for other workers and trade unionists getting behind us and this claim. But it takes time. It took us a long time to get going and get up off our knees and grasp this campaign by the scruff of the neck and take it forward.

The Prime Minister has described your claim as “unrealistic” and will drive up mortgages and damage the economy?

We have prepared very, very well for this dispute and the claim. We didn’t just get the £30,000 figure off the top of our heads. We can provide documented evidence as to why the claim is reasonable and what effect it will have on the economy. For Tony Blair to make the comments he did, with the responsibility he has, was clearly irresponsible. They were clearly designed to attack the FBU, to attack and suppress workers and any other claims. The real cost of our claim, without any modern-isation package, would actually cost each household in Britain around 41p a week. It’s not the stuff to smash the economy. The 41p will not drive mortgage rates through the roof and bring the country to its knees. Once we achieve proper rates of pay for the work we do now we are prepared to sit down and talk about modernisation. We can demonstrate that by achieving the targets about reducing death and the destruction of property by fire this claim will be at nil cost to the country. This evidence comes from Ernst and Young, the same consultants used by the government itself.