The London Fire Brigades Union has decided in its infinite wisdom to call a strike for the 5th November. Now for those of you who don't know this is the date of a very British celebration called 'bonfire night or guy Fawkes night', when we let fireworks off and well.... have bonfires, as this is the night in which we celebrate the foiling of a plot (way back in 1605) by Guy Fawkes to blow up Parliament and with it the ruling elite of England.
The proposed strike seems to be a tad bit insane, especially from a PR viewpoint, given the relationship between lighting fires and letting off fireworks and the statistical increase in house fires and the like, it has given David Cameron the opportunity to call the strike "irresponsible".
This led to me to ask myself, if this is irresponsible and there is a possible connection to the strike and public safety, 'should the Fire Brigades be even allowed to strike?' After all the Police are not permitted to have a Union or to go on strike; clearly the armed forces are not either (it will most likely be the overstretched army which will attempt to deal with emergency calls). I do appreciate that in a democracy there is the right to withdraw one's labour- but should this come at the cost of endangering the very people the public servant is supposed to be protecting?
Discuss.
This led to me to ask myself, if this is irresponsible and there is a possible connection to the strike and public safety, 'should the Fire Brigades be even allowed to strike?' After all the Police are not permitted to have a Union or to go on strike; clearly the armed forces are not either (it will most likely be the overstretched army which will attempt to deal with emergency calls). I do appreciate that in a democracy there is the right to withdraw one's labour- but should this come at the cost of endangering the very people the public servant is supposed to be protecting?
Discuss.
1 comments:
Its to give the public a clear example what life will be like after the changes are put in place when there will be fewer engines on the road looking after its public. The plans to reduce the units on the road is a greater risk to lives.There are plans to reduce a current minimum of five people to one unit to four putting firefighters themselves and public and greater risk. The possibility also of cutting night hours from 16 to 12 just so that they can remove beds which are meerly recogniseable as those you would find in a prison cell to be replaced by recling chairs costing over £1,000 each (possibly more)which are yet to pass a health and saftey tests. The goverment has spent millions of pounds gathering retired firefighters and the rif raf as it is which are left to be trained and take over the station.when strikes occur. I beleive that on the most recent strike which saw the millions of pounds be put to "good use" for the first time is what you may call a small failure with the less expierienced and retired firefighters crash six times in one evening. I find the decisions to cut jobs hours and units irresponsible to a greater extent than the one you talk of for one evening. They would gladly put peoples lives at risk than spend money.
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