Derbyshire
and the Peak District firefighters are at risk from being sacked and
then re-employed on various new contracts in an effort to force the
hard working teams to accept shift changes according to the Fire
Brigade Union.
Members
of the FBU and their families protested at a meeting of Derbyshire Fire
Authority last week about the changes, which will see day shifts
extended to 11 hours and night shifts reduced to 13 hours from 15 hours.
Fire
crews are concerned that the proposed changes will disrupt childcare
and believe the plans will not benefit the public. Mark Ferron, FBU
Derbyshire
brigade chair, said "Derbyshire's fire crews will not sit back and let
councillors sack them and impose new contracts without a response. We
are now going to go back to members and work out what we are going to
be doing.
The family side of it all is quite important. We have
women firefighters and single fathers as well as members who won't see
their children for some period of time after doing an 11 hour day shift. With
an extra two hours on a day shift there is also a lot more risk. With
some of the jobs we do, we need to be quite on the ball so really,
we're not achieving anything from it. We are not closed to change but there have to be some benefits to the workforce."
Theresa
Knight,
head of Corporate Communications, said "The issue of a review
of the shift patterns for wholetime firefighters has been going on for
a couple of years now and has looked at a range of options. It
was the beginning of 2008 when discussions started in earnest and what
we have done is involved a representative from the FBU in Derbyshire
and also a regional representative as well. The fire authority have
agreed to bring in the 11/13 hour shifts and that will come in from 1
January 2009. In our control centre we already work the same shift
pattern, 11 hour days and 13 hour nights and then four days off. The
majority of our control centre staff are female and have families and
it works for them. One
reason the shifts are being modernised are that by doing 11 hour days
and 13 hour nights it gives us more time during the day for doing
things like training with staff."
She went on to say "There has
never been any suggestion that firefighters would be sacked and forced
into these changes. These
are changes to their terms and conditions and we are allowed to change
their contract conditions. There has never been any suggestion at any
point we would be effectively sacking them. That is totally incorrect.
We can just bring this in. It is a change within their contract, we are
not forcing them to work any more hours." | 
