Leo McKinstry

The Fire Brigades Union’s pandemic response has been a disgrace

From the vaccination programme to the NHS intensive care units, much of the British state has risen magnificently to the Covid challenge. But there is one element of the public realm that has lived down to the lowest expectations of its performance. The Fire Brigades Union, long a byword for militant intransigence in defence of outdated practices, has been at its self-serving, uncooperative worst during the crisis. In place of solidarity and dedication, it has displayed an ‘I’m all right Jack’ mentality as it discourages its members from undertaking humanitarian duties.

The FBU embodies British trade unionism at its most obstructive. It hides behind safety concerns, clings to rigid job descriptions and wallows in labyrinthine bureaucracy. A damning indictment of its irresponsible stance can be found in the latest report of HM Inspector of Fire and Rescue Services, Zoe Billingham, who recently analysed the response of this sector to the pandemic. Her investigation could hardly have been more scathing. In one explosive statement about the union’s insistence on tortuous negotiations for every single additional task requested by managers, she said that ‘the ability of the fire service to deploy firefighters into potentially life-saving activities was limited and delayed’. In effect, while other public service professionals were fighting to protect lives, FBU activists were putting lives in danger.

Billingham’s report is full of this kind of incendiary material. ‘It is deeply regrettable that fire and rescue services would have been better placed to assist local communities at their time of greatest need had it not been for the restrictive industrial relations arrangements,’ she writes. When it came to the vaccination programme, the FBU ‘placed restrictions on firefighters that were unsustainable’. As a result, union members were told not to volunteer for the rollout. In another extraordinary example, Suffolk fire service’s partner agencies asked staff to door-knock vulnerable people who had contacted national helplines, but the FBU ‘refused the request’.

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