Retained firefighters vote to end strike action and accept deal

Retained firefighters have voted by a margin of almost two-to-one to end their strike action and accept a deal on pay, rostering and staffing levels agreed at the Workplace Relations Commission last month.

In a ballot on the deal, which was concluded over the past couple of days, 63 per cent of those who voted supported the agreement, which provides for significant improvements to guaranteed basic pay, raised levels of minimum and additional time off. There was also a commitment that other outstanding issues will be addressed through further engagement with management.

Minister for Local Government Darragh O’Brien welcomed the news and said he would continue to push for further improvements to the firefighters’ terms.

“I have always acknowledged the challenges associated with both the recruitment and retention of retained fire personnel and I have consistently advocated for a better approach and I will continue to do so,” he said.

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As part of the process that resulted in the deal brokered at the WRC, Mr O’Brien had specifically committed to advocating in the forthcoming national public sector pay talks for additional increases for the firefighters. Those talks are expected to start over the coming month and meetings between representatives of the roughly 2,000 retained firefighters and the Local Government Management Association (LGMA) are expected to take place in the coming weeks.

The roughly 2,000 firefighters involved in the dispute are regarded as part-time workers, paid a retainer for being available to attend call-outs. They provide almost all of the services outside of the major urban centres where full-time firefighters are employed.

Despite their part-time status, they argue that outside employers tend to be less tolerant now of the demands of their firefighting role than used to be the case, leaving a growing number of them wholly dependent on their firefighting income which is largely dependent on the number of call-outs they attend. Short staffing, they also argue, had meant many were also required to be on-call almost all of the time.

While the 63 per cent vote in support of the deal falls someway short of the margin in previous ballots for the strike action, Siptu’s Karan O Loughlin said it gives the union “a basis on which to progress things” while sending a message to the Minister that “this is not a done deal”.

[ Firefighters warn Taoiseach strike will escalate and lives could be put at risk if dispute not resolved ]

“There is a huge amount of work to be done to bring the service to where it needs to be,” Ms O Loughlin said.

“There’s a lot of work that they (the firefighters) want to see done around the rebuilding of the service because it has been neglected for so long.

“The process of getting all of the resolutions into the system takes time but they’re nervous about the Minister upholding his commitment in terms of the second movement on the retainer. So that’s something that we have to watch very carefully.”

That retainer previously started at about €10,000 annually for new entrants to the service but will rise to approximately €18,000 overall under the terms of the deal, with knock-on effects for higher grades.

Ms O Loughlin said the commitment to further improvement is clear in the WRC document agreed and must be honoured.

She said she expects engagement the LGMA on other issues, including recruitment policies, and how third party employers are approached with regard to the treatment of retained firefighters working for them, to start this month.

The LGMA welcomed the acceptance by Siptu retained firefighters of the agreement and said it will now move forward to engage on the implementation of the terms of the agreement.