Fire fighters' entitlements:
Privatisation fans a smouldering dispute

NSW firefighters last week took strike action over anomalies concerning 
death or injury entitlements. At a rally outside State Government House, 
they hung their helmets and uniforms over the front fence and later 
instituted bans on the majority of their members taking part in fire-
fighting work.

At the centre of the dispute is a bizarre tangle of differing entitlements 
to compensation for firefighters who suffer injury or death while fighting 
fires.

The work of firefighters involves dealing directly with situations of 
extreme physical hazard in the defence of human life and property.

However, despite the social value of their work, death and injury payments 
for firefighters have historically only been won in the face of long and 
difficult industrial struggles, and are now being severely eroded.

In particular, different groups of firefighter employees now have vastly 
differing entitlements because of changes to the relevant arrangements 
introduced over the last seven years.

For example, in NSW a 35-year-old firefighter who commenced employment 
before 1985, and who is subsequently injured on the job and can no longer 
continue his or her current work, would receive a lifetime indexed pension. 
This is currently approximately $225 per week.

If the same firefighter died as a result of fire-fighting work, his or her 
family would receive a lifetime pension equivalent to approximately $300 
per week, indexed to the CPI.

Three hundred dollars per week isn't much to feed a family on, you might 
well say. But even this has been radically reduced under arrangements 
introduced for employees who joined the Fire Brigade service after 1985.

Families of employees who are killed at work, and who joined between 1986 
and 1992, would receive only a lump-sum payment of $58,000, equivalent to 
less than four years of the pre-1985 pension.

This paltry amount is even further reduced to a payment of $54,000 under 
arrangements introduced for those joining the service after 1992.

Under the current arrangements, the majority of the State's firefighters 
are therefore inadequately covered by benefits in the event of severe 
injury or death.

No cover

Some actually have no cover at all.

Post-1985 employees who suffer an injury that prevents them from returning 
to fire-fighting work may be denied any benefits at all, if the insurer 
deems that the employee can do any other work.

The insurer may even refuse to make any payment at all, where the member's 
account balance is less than $1,000, and where the insurance premium of $5 
per month has not been paid.

Therefore, recently-employed firefighters who suffer an injury and are 
thereafter unable to do any work may find that they and their families have 
no financial support whatsoever.

The key reason for the difference in death or injury benefits after 1985 
is the partial privatisation of the State employees' superannuation 
organisation.

Under the pre-1985 arrangements, the State met all expenses incurred in the 
firefighters' entitlements as a result of work-related injury or death.

For employees joining after that date the responsibility for accident and 
injury expenses is met by means of legal arrangements between the State 
Government and private insurers.

The post-1985 employees' loss of pension entitlements is a direct result of 
these arrangements.

Recent research carried out by the NSW Fire Brigade Employees' Union (FBEU) 
failed to find a single private insurer who would offer pension 
entitlements comparable to those available to employees employed before 
1985 — for any price.

It is noteworthy that NSW politicians have retained their original 
superannuation scheme, including generous pensions, and have not sought the 
services of private insurers to fund their death or injury entitlements!

The FBEU has adopted a simple policy with regard to firefighters' death or 
injury entitlements. They say that the entitlements of all employees should 
be consistent, regardless of the date they joined the service.

The bans placed on doing fire-fighting work applied to those firefighters 
who are not covered by the maximum entitlements, so reducing the risk of 
death or injury.

The firefighters have served notice that they will not tolerate being 
forced to carry this particularly nasty outcome of the privatisation 
process.