Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
FIREFIGHTERS NEXT TO SEEK STRIKE ACTION
999 crews furious at 2% pay offer
FIREFIGHTERS yesterday joined the growing list of workers threatening to strike over pay.
It came as 115,000 postal workers began voting on whether to strike.
The Fire Brigades Union is recommending members reject a 2% offer, claiming that between 2009 and 2021 members’ real wages have been cut by 12% or nearly £4,000.
General secretary Matt Wrack said: “This pay offer is utterly inadequate and would deliver a further cut in real wages to firefighters in all roles.”
He insisted the union and its members “do not consider or take industrial action lightly or without ensuring that all efforts to resolve the issue have been exhausted”.
He said the FBU will seek urgent extra Government funding to enable a reasonable pay offer to be made.
The Communication Workers Union wants Royal Mail to negotiate a “straight, no-strings” pay increase for staff – rather what it says is a 2% rise.
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We believe there are no grounds for industrial action.”
Workers in the private and public sectors are threatening walkouts over pay and conditions.
Recent rail strikes have spread from British Airways to barristers who held a second day of action yesterday.
Union Unite yesterday announced it won a “game-changing” 18% pay rise for Heathrow-based cabin crew employed by CAE Crewing on its contract for a Scandinavian airline. After two 48-hour strikes, Unite also announced it had sealed an 8.5% pay deal for metal workers at Darchem Engineering in Stockton-on-tees
GPS are threatening industrial action over a contract forcing them to work evenings and weekends, though they are unlikely to stop giving emergency care. They want the British Medical Association to “organise opposition”. Dr Jackie Applebee, a GP in Tower Hamlets in London, said: “We can’t trust this Government to protect general practice or the NHS.”