The following is a personal account of the 11 years from early 1990 until July 2001 when I resigned from the NZ Fire Service to come to Australia and how it affected my family and the guys I worked with in New Zealand.
The current Industrial climate in Australia reminds me of 1989 in New Zealand. We were all working away at the best job in the world, bemoaning the fact that the job was f
. d, Well not what it used to be anyway!!! And most of us were oblivious to the consequences of the newly introduced Employment Contracts Act. (ECA). The ECA of 1990 resembles a watered down version of the newly imposed reforms to IR law that the Howard government have enacted today.
I started in the NZ Fire Service in Auckland in March 1981, and after 3 years I was granted a transfer to Hastings, a provincial city of some 60,000 residents, both urban and rural on the East Coast of the North Island. 20kms away from Hastings, next to the sea is Napier, with a similar population. Both citys had one station with a manning of 8 i.e. two crews manning a pump and a pump/rescue tender. Backup vehicles were complimentary; we in Hastings cross-crewed a heavy tanker, hazmat and command vehicles while Napier had a 17m Snorkel and a Hose layer. The rest of the fleet comprised extra urban and rural pumps manned by off duty staff on a callout system via pager and the 25 or so urban volunteers at each station.
We worked a system of routine hours, our working day being 8 of the ten hours for a dayshift. This work included training/drill, one hour PT, Fire-Ed and RAAP type educational programmes, and departmental work, i.e. working in the hose store, equipment maintenance, station maintenance, or in my case in the BA Dept. Routine hours on nights were from 6pm-9pm and reduced hours on weekends. Over an 8-week cycle you averaged 17 of your 42 hours per week on routine work.
These hours were quite strictly adhered to in smaller places, as there was so much work to be done, but in the likes of Auckland and Wellington out-stations, less so, as there wasnt the workload and there is only so much training you can do before you go mad. The significance of these 17 hours per week will become clearer soon, read on.
Our last settled contract was dated from early in 1990, about the time of the Auckland Commonwealth Games from memory, and it ran for 12 months. During negotiations for the next contract in 1991 things began to turn a little sour, with mention of longer hours and fewer fire fighters. The Tauranga station was being refurbished at the time and the employer (The Fire Service Commission) was so confident that the new laws (ECA) gave them the power to do what they wanted, they had the bedroom block rebuilt with only 3 lockers in each room i.e. one per shift.
We were offered a 3-shift system that would involve a 56-hour week shift system, with a very generous choice of how you wanted to operate it. The options included 3 days, 3 nights, 3off, or a dayshift, 24hours, then another nightshift then 3 off and a couple of other equally unappealing options. Any of the preceding involved about 30% more hours and to compensate this we were offered between 15 and 20% more money. A major consideration for those in Auckland and Wellington brigades was that they were traveling 6 out of 9 days to work instead of 4 out of 8. A 50% increase in traveling costs and time away from home when guys I knew were traveling over 90 min. each way to work and home, as I was when I was working in Auckland.
When the 56 hour week didnt get up and fly as the Commission had hoped, the ECA allowed them to change the focus of our job description slightly and employ other people to do our job, but just call it something else, and so were born the CSTs, Community Safety Teams. A succession of appointed commissioners and heads of the Fire Service had all had their own vision for the future for the Service and out of these came the CSTs. A few were trained initially, about 13 if memory serves me correctly, and they were posted to fringe stations in Auckland and Wellington where there had only been station keepers working only day shifts previously, our wonderful jolly vollies covered their areas at night and weekends. The boiled frog syndrome was used to perfection, with the CSTs inserted in little stages as a supplement to the permanent staff and not instead of us.
When that seemed to work OK, they used an Air Force base in Christchurch and had a training course for 230 plus of these CSTs, and they dragged them in from everywhere along with a large number who would have never got into the job via a proper recruiting process. One can only wonder at how much individual attention any one of the 230 got during their training which lasted 14 weeks, instead of the initial 9 weeks we had. The significance of the time in training will also become clearer soon, so read on.
Instructors for a training course of this size were difficult to obtain, apart from a few of our members that had decided the Vision of the current incumbent at the top of the tree of Fire Service structure was for them. Attempts were made to lure instructors from Australian Fire Brigades, but all were perceptive enough to see that they were being duped into undermining the rights of union members in NZ. Those members from within our ranks, who had accepted a cash payment to leave the protection of membership of the NZPFU and join the other side, remain to this day, blackballed and banished from union fire stations throughout the country. Long may they remain so!!!!!
Once the training course was complete, whole stations of union members were shipped out and the station was then turned over to the CSTs. The north shore of Auckland had 4 permanently manned stations and as in Sydney, it is separated from the city by a harbour and a bridge. In 1981, during my recruit training, the North Shore Fire Brigade and the Auckland Metropolitan Fire Brigade were amalgamated. The Shore had always been very English oriented with ERF trucks, Coventry pumps and many ex pat poms working there. These guys were fiercely proud of their Brigade, as we were of our more US aligned service with International trucks and exclusively Darley pumps. It suited some members of either Brigade to shift work places over the bridge, but in the main, most guys stayed where they were and got on with life. I worked at Ponsonby, the closest station to the harbour bridge, so we went to many calls on the Shore in support of Birkenhead and Takapuna stations.
Then the CSTs came along, and all the union staff on the Shore were given minimal notice and told that they were being moved out to make way for the better trained recruits (this where the 14 weeks training comes into the argument). The public was told that the CSTs were a step up from the service they had been getting from the previous crews, some of whom had given 30 years or more service to the people of the North Shore.
12 CSTs, i.e. 3 shifts of 4, were assigned per station. All members of each shift were off the same course, so essentially had equal experience
ZERO!!! A Team Leader was appointed from within each crew and away they went. If you had been a volunteer, or had been in the Services and had an idea about giving or taking orders, you got the job of leading the rest of your team into the darkness, knowing practically nothing. A slightly different scenario confronted the guys in Rotorua, who had a similar station to what we had in Hastings with two crews manning pump and pump rescue trucks.
Manning had been falling throughout the country due to retirement etc and as there had been no recruiting done to maintain staff numbers on our contract, staffing at Rotorua had fallen to a point where all the D1 (union) staff were put on the pump/rescue truck and the CSTs were put on the pump.
All 12 CSTs were put in a small bus and driven around the city of Rotorua for a week, being shown the main arterial roads, major life risks, which included an enormous number of accommodation facilities ranging from home stays to 10 storey hotels, and the main geothermal risks which are unique to the city and surrounding area. The following Monday, the first of the 3 shifts was then given the keys to the truck and off they went saving the city at every opportunity. Well it appeared so, if you had no knowledge of firefighting. The shifts were spent promoting Community safety as their title implied, checking and/or installing smoke alarms, checking fire hydrants and a myriad of other services to the community. It wasnt long before they had exhausted the available jobs and started to repeat themselves. The public would call the station and ask to be removed from any further calling lists and many pretended not to be at home when they saw a fire truck come into their street.
Planning for the introduction of the CSTs was so poorly thought out that the employer had forgotten to arrange to have fire crews available between midnight and 0800hrs because the shifts adopted by some areas didnt allow for this. The make plans on the run answer to this anomaly was to ask the CSTs to stay after midnight and just get paid if there was a fire call, not unlike the Retained system here in Australia that keeps Union members out of a job in provincial areas. The miserable pay being what it was, many CSTs were happy to do these extra hours to supplement their poor salaries.
The CSTs were being paid considerably less than we were, and were working 30% longer hours for it. They had been told blatant, out-right lies during their training about our pay scales, superannuation arrangements and conditions of employment in comparison to their own. They were told that the employers contribution was part of the salary package and that the same arrangement also applied to us, but this was not the case, our employer contribution was extra to our salary.
The two crews at Rotorua did not talk to each other for 4 years, having separate meal breaks and lounge facilities within the station. The stress of two lots of 4 people living in a station and not communicating must have been immense and had a severely detrimental affect on all involved.
Over a period of time, many became disenchanted with the lies and deceit, opting to leave or nominate our Union as their nominated bargaining agent, which was within the rules of the ECA. The trickle became a flood and soon most of the CSTs had the NZPFU bargaining for them and we in turn had their support and union fees on our side of the fight. And fight we did!!!!!
By 1997 we had not had a pay rise for over 6 years, there had been no recruiting into our ranks to the point that the youngest guy on my shift at Hastings was the youngest firey in the union, had never had a pay rise during his entire career (that wasnt due to promotion) and for all that was a 10 year Senior Fireman.
We worked hard through the Union, employing solicitors to fight out case against the Fire Service and this soaked up enormous amounts of money. I can recall at least three or more occasions where a union notice was read out at parade requesting that an injection of funds be made to maintain the fight to protect our jobs, literally!!!! Every request was met with the response that if we give up now, all before has been wasted, we would go out in the truck to our homes to get the cash or our cheques books, and such was the dedication needed to win this fight. It would take just a few days to collect $100 from each of us and send it off to the Union office in the Wellington suburb of Petone.
The conservative National Party government had introduced legislation allowing Citizens Initiated Referenda, and the union organized the first ever referendum under this new law. It asked the question whether the fire service manning should be reduced below that at January 1 1995??
The referendum was held separately to the general election, which was held a few weeks previously, so as to maximize the cost to the taxpayer and minimize the attendance as voting is not compulsory in NZ. 572,919 people voted in the referendum (30% of eligible voters) and 88% voted NO. This was a major victory for the Union, to get over half a million people out to vote on a single issue and have such resounding support for our cause. The Government was not bound by the result and treated it with the same contempt that they showed to our members and used the cost of the whole exercise against us in an attempt to win a few more votes.
In July 1998 all Union members and their spouses were assembled at there respective stations to be told that we were all to be sacked en masse if we didnt choose one of two options which were to re-apply for our own jobs or apply for a redundancy package. There were a lot fewer jobs on offer than there were possible applicants, so some of us were going to miss out. That was the end of the meeting and very little discussion was entered into, apply for a job, apply for a payout, or if you did neither it was down the road.
So, the entire membership of the Fire fighters Union did NEITHER!!! They couldnt sack us all, could they? Standing together and doing neither took enormous guts and was very stressful, but I feel strongly that it was the turning point in the war being waged against us.
This happened 3 times over a period of a year, and was very hard on wives and families, as well as members. A few members who had had enough of the pressure took advantage of the opportunity to get out and take a grub stake with them, but that just increased the pressure on those that remained to maintain the required manning levels at their stations.
Overtime to maintain manning increased dramatically. It was rostered, and once you were given an O/T shift it was youre responsibility to swap it or give it away if it was inconvenient. I was regularly issued with 8 shifts to be done over a two-week period in addition to my own shifts. That doesnt leave much time for the family. I remember one stretch of 3 leave cycles in the late 90s (nearly two years) when the only time I got 4 days off in a row was when I was on leave. Sometimes just two days off was a treat!!!
While all this was wearing members down, we were being harangued and abused from within the protection of Parliamentary privilege, know nothing politicians misusing statistics (the old story of lies, Damned Lies and statistics) to make us appear like bludgers and lazy wasters in the public eye. The public was asked if it was fair that we should refuse to work 25 hours a week instead of the current 17 hours for the 39 grand I was on as a Snr. Fireman, when Joe public had to work at least 40 hours. This is the misuse of the routine hours scenario referred to earlier. No mention was made of the 48 hours a week, plus overtime, (The greatest number of hours I worked in one week was 117, from 0800 on a Monday morning till 1800 hrs the following Monday afternoon I spent away from home). The public were told we spent all night asleep and then work second jobs, ran businesses via mobile phone from the station or out in the truck, we spent every day driving around town going to McDonalds and picking up building supplies in the fire truck when one guy in a van could do the job and use less public money on fuel! We got bagged relentlessly like this in the newspapers, on television, on radio, in magazines and in Parliament.
Please dont think that these arguments wont get thrown at us here in Australia when it come to a fight, they will use everything they can, including enormous amounts of money spent on advisors and PR people.
The Union organized a number of protest rallies to Parliament in Wellington, and on one occasion we had union members from every permanently manned Fire Brigade in the country in attendance.
Obviously, some had to stay at home and man the trucks, but of those not on duty that dayshift, we had more than 60% of the off duty staff in NZ there at Parliament, which meant that most of those on duty that day were also going to be on that night, working double shifts so that the protest was as big as possible. Central Wellington came to a standstill when hundreds of Firefighters, in uniform, marched through the streets to cheers of the public at lunchtime. A meeting with the Unions lawyers ended the day, before we all had to get home and back on duty the next day for a lot of us.
The fight with the employer continued in the courts, and eventually cost Union members in excess of $800,000, some of which was won back when we were awarded more than $200,000 costs after winning the case against the Fire Service. It took another trip to court for the Judge to order payment of the costs, or for some the hierarchy of the service to spend time inside. That sobered them up somewhat, and the union got the much-needed funds.
Eventually, the solidarity of the union membership and the application of commonsense and JUSTICE in the judicial system saw an end to a long procession of government appointed chief Executive Officers, National Commanders, and Fire Service Commission members, all of whom had arrived with a new Government anointed Vision and then left, usually with a wad of tax-payer funded dollars to show for their efforts. Whilst researching archived newspaper articles, I have been reminded of many names and events that had slipped from my memory, such was their minimal tenure in a position, or the ineffectiveness of their conduct during that tenure.
I remember well, a meeting at Hastings Station with the then Chief Executive Officer of the NZ Fire Service, whose name escapes me, such was the impression she made. I do remember that she had skinny, ugly legs and that her husband worked in the Prime Ministers office though?? We were all seated around the very large mess room table, along with our Chief Fire Officer, and we listened politely while she went on about how she was going to save the world, well, our bit of it anyway.
As she tried to engage us in a two way conversation she mentioned the effort and great success we were having with new entrant Fire Ed programmes in local schools and asked for any comment, so I piped up and suggested to her, very politely, that we in Hastings made all that effort on behalf of our community in spite of the fire service commission, and not for it I thought my Chief was going to drop dead, because he went a funny green colour and the room fell silent. Eventually, the CEO made a joke and carried on, but it was the most silent pause I have ever experienced in a conversation.
10 years of continuous pressure, and stress had the same result on me that it did on a large number of fellow fireys in NZ, that was the breakdown of families and marriages, an unusually high incidence of certain cancers and other illnesses. During the 10 years from early 1990 until 1st July 2001, I had remained on the same salary, without any increase in pay, because the ECA allowed the employer to ignore us. We had worked extremely long and ever-increasing hours to maintain fire cover to the agreed level. When the contract was settled, excessive overtime was banned. Suddenly it was not proper to work 60 to 80 hours a week any more, but it had been deemed appropriate when we were struggling without recruits for 10 years.
The contract was finally agreed to by the National Commander (yet another one) and included one contract for all members of the union (us and the CSTs) with reasonable increases in pay and allowances. To put a human face on the preceding 10 years, my son grew from a little 6 year old to a very large 17-year-old First XV rugby forward, all the while I was battling away on the same pay rate during this time. I worked more Rugby games than I saw him play over those years, something the Fire Service Commission could never repay me for.
There can be no compensation for these effects on working people and no excuse for them either. If this scenario repeating itself is to be avoided here in Australia, we need to motivate everyone in the Union and work together to prevent any further deterioration of the working environment of Australians and Firefighters in particular.
Below are some archived articles published in the NZ Herald newspaper from Auckland.
NZ Herald, 28.12.1998
WELLINGTON - Legal action over an Employment Court injunction sought by firefighters will cost the Fire Service Commission nearly $340,000 - if it pays up.
As well its own bill of more than $150,000, the commission was ordered to pay costs to the Professional Firefighters Union.
N Z Herald, 06.02.1999
WELLINGTON The controversial restructuring of the Fire Service was put on hold last night after the Employment Court awarded the Professional Firefighters' Union an interim injunction.
It is the court's second ruling against the service over restructuring.
In October, Chief Judge Tom Goddard permanently halted the service's plans, issued in June, to fire all 1500 of its firefighters and make them reapply for their jobs.
In yesterday's ruling, Judge Goddard said the service had not consulted the union on its plans to change the minimum shift manning and establishment figures within designated areas.
N Z Herald, 16.01.1999
By Keith Perry and NZPA
Station Officer Ian Graham.
Fire crews are threatening to walk out if their whistle blowing boss is sacked after exposing inadequacies among community Fire Service teams.
Station Officer Ian Graham will hear his fate at a disciplinary hearing today where he must answer to fire chiefs over leaking to the media a report he had written.
Mr. Graham alleged that a community team handled a house fire so poorly that it was gutted when it could have been saved from sustaining more than 60 per cent damage.
Last night, colleagues at Lower Hutt station said Mr. Graham was being punished simply for raising legitimate safety concerns.
N Z Herald, 22.03.1999
New fire chief fighting cutback
By Eugene Bingham
The new national fire commander is fighting a cut in the number of firefighters on appliances, a key part of the stalled Fire Service "modernisation" programme.
Ken Harper is also understood to have serious concerns about the level of involvement of the Fire Service Commission chairman, Roger Estall, in the day-to-day running of the service.
Mr. Harper's opposition to the move from four to three-person crews, and concern about the lines of demarcation, immediately put him offside with Mr. Estall and fuelled the power struggle already being waged in the service.
It is understood the stance nearly cost him his job before he arrived from Northern Ireland to take it up in January.
"He has done nothing wrong in our eyes except tell the public the truth," said one colleague. "If they try to sack him for this, we will support him."
N Z Herald, 07.05.1999
By Eugene Bingham
WELLINGTON - A $500,000 public relations budget and a $50,000 expense account for Roger Estall were among details of the financial mess in the Fire Service unraveled yesterday. Figures released showed that the public relations company Morris Communications had cost the Fire Service Commission $493,271 in the seven months from December 1997.
And it was revealed that Mr. Estall, the commission chairman, had spent $50,645 on travel, accommodation and hospitality in the year to last June.
The details were tabled at a parliamentary select committee conducting a financial review of the service in light of a damning Audit New Zealand report criticising the commission for a lack of financial controls.
Mr. Estall was hauled back before the committee at late notice yesterday to explain more details of the commission's financial state. His answers gave Opposition MPs another chance to call for his resignation, and left Internal Affairs Minister Jack Elder with the job of having to dampen hot spots once again.
N Z Herald, 19.05.1999
Estall: I have had a gutsful
By Vernon Small and Eugene Bingham
Fire Service Commissioner Roger Estall has finally bowed to pressure and resigned, receiving a $68,00 farewell handshake from the Government.
He was cut adrift last night ahead of a report critical of the commission's financial management.
But Mr. Estall said the report was not the cause of his resignation, which would take effect tomorrow.
Internal Affairs Minister Jack Elder and Prime Minister Jenny Shipley continued to defend Mr. Estall.
.
N Z Herald, 13.10.1999
Judges quell mass fire staff layoffs
By Chris Daniels
The long and bitter battle to sack the country's firefighters and make them reapply for fewer jobs is finally over - and with it seems to have gone the plan to cut fire-engine crew numbers from four to three.
The Court of Appeal yesterday rejected a bid by the Fire Service Commission to overturn an Employment Court decision preventing the mass dismissals.
The decision means an end to moves the commission first announced in May 1998 to sack the 1575 firefighters and get them to apply for 300 fewer positions, and to reduce crew number on fire engines.
The Professional Firefighters Union, which has been fighting the restructuring plan in the courts for the past year, yesterday hailed the judges' ruling as a comprehensive defeat for the commission.
Acting chief executive Alison Timms said the decision had cleared the decks and she was looking forward to a new and positive period ahead.
"It draws to a close a long and controversial chapter in the history of the New Zealand Fire Service."
She described the mass-layoff plan as a fairly dramatic restructuring proposal that had caused stress within the organisation, and "the hearing has closed the book on that."
But union president Mike McEnaney said the latest decision was nothing less than a total defeat for a commission that had wasted public money on a legal fight it knew it would lose.
"The very first thing they have to do now is send every firefighter a letter saying his notice of dismissal is now cancelled. I doubt very much whether their pride will allow those individuals to do that." Alison Timms and commission chairwoman Dame Margaret Bazley took over the top Fire Service jobs after the resignation of Jean Martin and Roger Estall in May.
Last year, Employment Court Chief Judge Tom Goddard ruled that the Fire Service had acted unethically and had not been fair or reasonable in its efforts to sack the firefighters.
The commission was an employer that "was willing to deliberately breach its employment contract obligations."
The commission then appealed against injunctions Judge Goddard imposed stopping it from going through with the mass sackings.
Yesterday, this appeal was rejected, along with a challenge against an award the Employment Court made of $186,626 in costs to the union against the commission. The appeal judges will give reasons for their decisions later. On the rostering issue, Mr. McEnaney said firefighters had always been available to do fire-prevention duties outside of their 17.5 hours of "routine work" a week, and this had often happened in the past. He said the union's win meant moves to cut the size of some fire-engine crew numbers were essentially dead in the water.
..
The photo below was taken at Hastings Fire Station, before the departure of Firefighters to a Union rally at Parliament in Wellington
Here is a message all Aussies should recognize and understand. It is a T-Shirt I wear at every opportunity.
Senior fireman Mal Garner,
ACT fire Brigade,
Canberra.
