Labourstart News
| Lies Lies and Damn Statistics | 21st May 2008  |
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Yesterdays ‘Daily Telegraph’ ran a front page story claiming: “Firefighters are acting as ambulance officers and treating the sick at crash scenes and other emergencies in a growing trend aimed at plugging holes in the health system.” The story was generated by the newspaper after it had filed a Freedom of Information request with the NSWFB and established an exponential increase in the number of occasions firefighters have provided medical assistance to sick or injured people. As firefighters we have a moral, ethical and legal obligation to assist in providing first aid to people in need given we now all have the training, skills and equipment needed to do so. No one is arguing we shouldn’t and indeed the Union has gone one step further and called on the Government to clearly and unequivocally state if it intends to run down the ambulance service and use professional firefighters to carry the slack. In an increasingly shrill and repetitive tone the Department is once again claiming that the Union is misrepresenting the truth and that we have “…suggested firefighters should not assist the community in this way.” This is clearly untrue and perhaps it is now time we all started to get some straight answers from the Department. Does anyone seriously believe that the Department doesn’t intend using firefighters in a medical role now that it has spent so much money on training and equipping every firefighter in the state to an advanced first aid level. Indeed the Department has already signed off on at least four separate brigades providing the dedicated emergency medical service in their own communities. The Department has now spent the better part of ten weeks sledging the Union and throwing everything it can at us to undermine our position both publicly and in the courts. If you want to hear what was actually said click here. The Union has also now appeared in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission on three separate occasions since our last Special General Meeting. On each of those occasions a judge has sought to narrow the disagreement between the Department and the Union over our current wage claim. While some progress has so far been made a further hearing before the judge is set for 10 am Thursday 22nd May in an attempt to further conciliate the dispute. Our full wage case is also scheduled for hearing by a full bench of four judges between August 25th and September 3rd - unless agreement can be reached prior. All members now need to clearly understand that our employer will be taking a hard line in opposing our claim in the courts, insisting that inflation is running at just 2.5% and offering no more money unless employee related wage costs can be reduced to fund it. Rather than supporting our claim for wage parity with Canberra firefighters we are now facing one of the most ideologically driven attacks on our entitlements since the 1970’s. Simon Flynn State Secretary |
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