The Guardian 25 June, 2008
Firefighters’ wages a low priority
Jules Andrews
Analysing last month’s NSW budget the NSW Fire Brigade Employees’ Union (NSWFBEU) noted that it is a budget that will cut taxes for business and property investors, fund a surplus of over $200 million and slash public sector workers wages by an average of approximately 1.5 percent a year in real terms.
While the total Fire Departments budget will increase 6% next year, this barely recognises the shortfall in spending of $17 million last year. This spending was used buy new fire engines, rescue equipment, air-sets, cameras and to fund new Community Fire Units.
However, that 6% only allows funding for employee-related wage costs of just 1.6% on last year, while the brigade has had the necessity to increase its employee related wage costs by 8.7%.
"While the NSW budget might be good for fire service managers and bureaucrats it is anything but good for public servants and in particular firefighters", the union said.
"No one would argue that there is not a need for new trucks, new stations, cameras, fans and air-sets but these don’t pay firefighters’ wages and they don’t put food on family tables. The budget is the clearest indication yet that with the cost of living surging ahead the priorities held by the Department are vastly different to the expectations of frontline firefighters."
With their wage case back in front of the Industrial Relations Commission, the NSWFBEU told its members they can expect the Department to increasingly reveal just exactly what it thinks of firefighters and the job they do in protecting communities throughout the state.
The union is now throwing everything it has into winning a real increase in wages for the next 2.5 years. That includes the first of the union’s television advertisements which screened during the "Fire 000" television program on the Nine Network on June 4. A copy of the advertisement has now been uploaded onto the union’s website.
"The question every firefighter in NSW needs to ask is just what are we prepared to do about a government that rode into office on the back of the public sector unions and is now slashing our wages simply because it thinks it can get away with it", said the union.