Six career firefighters for all of Auckland during hour-long strike, union says
Thursday, 11 August 2022
Aucklanders could be left to attend to small fires and minor incidents themselves when firefighters go on strike next week.
Firefighters who are in the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union will cease all work for an hour nationwide between 11am and noon on August 19, and again on August 26.
Joanne ‘Wattie’ Watson, the union’s secretary, said there was a possibility Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) would have a “very limited” ability to respond to fires during the strike.
She said the only firefighters who would be available to attend emergencies in that time would be non-union members.
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That amounted to “about six firefighters in Auckland”, Wattie said. There are more than 500 career firefighters in the region, according to the union.
Stuff has previously reported staffing of career firefighters being at “critical levels” across the motu, resulting in trucks being out of commission, and delayed responses to emergencies.
The firefighters will be holding signage during the strike, calling for an increase in staffing levels, updated fire trucks and appliances, health screening programmes and mental health training.
“They will all be walking off the job for an hour,” Watson said. “They will be leaving the stations and either walking across or down the road, asking for support from members of the public.”
Martin Campbell the union’s Auckland local secretary, said the few non-union members rostered on during the strike would need to be trained on how to use specialist equipment, such as aerial, rescue, and command unit appliances.
“In order to deploy those machines including the usual fire trucks, you have to have specific qualifications and experience.
“Some of the jobs we get called out to are really complex. If you’ve got people rostered on who don’t operate those machines on a daily basis, they are really going to struggle,” Campbell said.
A FENZ spokesperson would not confirm the number of career firefighters who would be rostered on during the strike, or whether they were trained in using specialist equipment.
Brendan Nally, deputy national commander, said FENZ had contingency plans in place, “which will enable us to continue to respond to emergencies, but with fewer firefighters and 111 Communication centre dispatchers than usual, our responses may be delayed”.
Nally said part of its contingency planning included not responding to less serious incidents in career zones during the hour, such as private fire alarms where there was no evidence of a fire, small rubbish fires or animal rescues.
'The strike action means that, for the hour in question, career crews will be unable to respond to medical emergencies as they usually would. We have notified St John and Wellington Free Ambulance. Volunteers will not be turned out to medical response outside of their usual area.”
Ron Devlin, Auckland region manager for FENZ, said while the fire service had offered to talk to the union about staffing ratios, it was confident Auckland had a sufficient number of career firefighters.
“In the last 14 days, there were only three shifts that didn’t have the full allocation of firefighters at Auckland stations. For those days, plans were in place to ensure we continued to respond to our communities.”
Devlin said FENZ also had in place a fatigue management policy, to monitor and manage the risks of fatigue and monitor overtime levels.
The organisation also offered support and education programmes, including free counselling and access to clinical psychologists.
It also had a national procurement programme to replace older fire trucks and was “undertaking a review of current aerial appliance strategy,” said Devlin.