SA Fire fighters win support with public

by Anna Pha

Adelaide firefighters have had work bans in place for seven weeks in a 
struggle to defend the quality of fire fighting services and in support of 
a pay claim. Union members are focusing their campaign on major shopping 
centres and malls, public transport outlets and major public events in the 
city and metropolitan areas.

They have displays on fire safety, are distributing bumper stickers, 
information leaflets and are collecting signatures on a petition in support 
of the union's demands. The petition is to be handed to Parliament on 
Wednesday February 10 when there will be a big public rally.

"We are trying to win improvements to the fire service for South Australian 
taxpayers. We're receiving very strong public support for our position", 
said SA Secretary of the United Firefighters' Union (UFU), Mick Doyle.

"We'll campaign for as long as it takes for the Government to agree to a 
fair and reasonable deal. And the longer we campaign, the more public 
support we'll get — I'm confident of that", said Mr Doyle.

"The public campaign is running parallel with work bans, but fire fighters 
stress that they will not strike nor will our work bans endanger lives."

The main issues in dispute are wages, the location of the communications 
centre for fire and ambulance services, and the setting up of an Emergency 
Services Administrative Unit covering management of fire, ambulance and 
State Emergency Services.

The response of the SA Metropolitan Fire Service to the Union's demands is 
completely unsatisfactory.

Pay claim

The Fire Fighters lodged a claim for an 18 per cent wage rise in three 
instalments of six per cent over three years. The best the Government could 
offer was a miserly six per cent over three years.

"The police have been given 13.5% and we're seeking at least that, given 
the dangerous nature of our work", said Mr Doyle.

The Liberal Coalition Government is also in the process of awarding 
parliamentarians an immediate 18 per cent pay rise with no productivity or 
other conditions attached!

The Coalition Government's Emergency Services Minister, John Brokenshire, 
issued a press release exclaiming, "... the union is out of touch with 
reality in demanding an 18 per cent pay rise. "The union fails to 
understand we don't have a bottomless pit of money."

Shrouded in secrecy

The number of fire fighters was slashed by 80 during the last enterprise 
bargaining process in 1996, which compromised efficiency and safety. Now 
the Government wants to increase management in the form of an Emergency 
Services Administration Unit and relocate the emergency services 
communications centre. The Government secretly commissioned a feasibility 
study to look at relocating the current communications facility outside of 
the Adelaide metropolitan area to an undisclosed site in the Adelaide 
Hills.

The Union is concerned that more workers could lose their jobs — either by 
not being offered their old jobs back or by the jobs being so far away from 
where they live that they will not be able to travel the distance.

"We will lose our ability to have our fire service communications run by 
people who know the business", Mick Doyle, told The Guardian.

Relocation could also involve privatisation as was the case in Victoria. 
The new communications centre would incorporate the government radio 
network which was set up using Motorola technology.

"We have a perfectly good system that is working very well at the moment. 
No reason has been put to us by the Government to persuade us that moving 
off-site is going to be of any benefit to the wider community", said Mr 
Doyle.

The only people to benefit would be giant communications companies such as 
Motorola who are already implicated in a scandal in South Australia 
involving a private deal with the Government to lure them to Adelaide.

Trying to defend its plans, the Government claims that the present 
communications facilities lie on an earthquake fault line.

The union commissioned a report from a geologist and studied the maps. "We 
are nowhere near a fault line", said Mr Doyle. "That is simply a 
smokescreen put up by the Minister."

The Minister also raised the bogey of terrorist attacks if the centre 
remained in Adelaide — as if facilities in the Adelaide Hills could not be 
attacked!

He also argued that as the present centre is on the same electricity grid 
as police communications and the two services back each other up, both 
facilities would go down in the event of a power blackout.

But, says Mr Doyle, the fire service facility has a state of the art 
automatic generator which cuts-in in the event of a power blackout.

Public support for the fire fighters is important. If you live in Adelaide 
you can support the campaign by signing their petition, displaying a bumper 
sticker on your car and by writing to Premier John Olsen or the Minister 
for Emergency Services, John Brokenshire, and voicing your support for the 
fire-fighters.