Victoria’s firefighters are splashed across the front pages of newspapers across the country, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull getting involved over the weekend. The deal has been dragging on for years, with career firefighters and volunteers pitted against each other in a bid for control over operations. It’s pitted Minister against Premier and Premier against Prime Minister — so what is actually going on?
What is the United Firefighters Union asking for?
The United Firefighters Union has been locked in negotiations with the Victorian government for more than three years over a pay deal that would affect wages of career firefighters, working conditions and safety measures. The list of demands is long, and as well as a significant payrise, the UFU is also demanding clauses that would affect the power balance between the union and the Country Fire Authority, and between career and volunteer firefighters. The UFU points to issues like the Fiskville training cancer cluster, Hazelwood mine fire and the fire in the Grampians as evidence that it needs more control to protect the safety of workers. The Fair Work Commission has approved the EBA, but this is a non-binding recommendation.
Why does the CFA have a problem with this?
The Country Fire Authority in Victoria includes volunteer and career firefighters who respond to emergencies outside of Melbourne, which is covered by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB). The CFA board has rejected the union EBA deal (the UFU represents career firefighters, some of whom are in the CFA, and the CFA board has to approve any UFU deal), saying that it could not approve the deal in its current form. In a statement released today, it said: “We have serious concerns many of these proposed clauses are unlawful and we have legal advice that indicates CFA would be in breach of its statutory obligations.”
The CFA, overwhelmingly a volunteer organisation, is concerned that the deal would give the UFU too much power over its operational decision-making processes, and would contravene its volunteer charter — the state has 60,000 volunteer firefighters. The CFA does support a wage increase for firefighters, but says: “The proposed EBA undermines volunteers, our culture, allows the UFU operational and management control of CFA and is discriminatory.”
The union wants a dispute resolution officer and also “EMR [emergency medical response] rollout to integrated stations”, which means at stations that include both volunteer and professional firefighters, a minimum of seven professional firefighters would be required to be sent to call outs. It could also give professional firefighters more power at the scene of a fire, causing conflict between the two bodies.
Today’s Fairfax papers report that the Victoria’s Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission has also ruled against 12 clauses in the deal, suggesting that eight parts of the agreement did not comply with the Equal Opportunity Act and five clauses were potentially non-compliant. The CFA commissioned the report, which found that the EBA’s rostering provisions discriminated against people who wanted to work part time.
Which side is Daniel Andrews on?
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was originally against the UFU when it came to the deal’s veto proposal, but he changed his mind after a meeting with UFU boss Peter Marshall without Emergency Services Minister Jane Garrett. This puts him in opposition to Garrett, who has pledged to support the CFA, and has reportedly considered resigning over the issue. Victorian cabinet will meet today to discuss the dispute after Andrews returned early from the United States. Now we have to wait and see if Andrews pushes the deal through cabinet — and his minister out in the process.
Why is it up to the Fair Work Commission to decide?
Technically it’s not. Fair Work Commissioner Julius Roe was called in to adjudicate over the deal, and last week Roe made a non-binding recommendation in favour of the UFU. Roe was previously president of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, and he told the CFA that the role of volunteers would not be changed by the agreement.
Why is the federal Liberal Party getting involved?
Victoria is a Labor Party stronghold, and since his election in 2014, Premier Daniel Andrews has mainly been popular with voters. While this is a state issue, it’s one that the Liberal Party can use to wedge the Labor Party, especially as Victorians are incredibly proud of CFA volunteers. Over the weekend Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull attended a CFA protest in Melbourne, calling the deal an “extraordinary assault on fundamental Australian values” and pledging to change workplace laws to protect volunteer firefighters. He invoked memories of Black Saturday when saying he would defend the volunteer firies:
“I will never forget inspecting the devastation of the Black Saturday bushfire and going to the CFA at Diamond Creek and thanking you. Your heroism that day was the best of Australia; when 19,000 of you in that time of horror stood between Victorians and that inferno and put your lives on the line … you are the very best of us and we will back you to the hilt.”
Why is this issue so heated?
Emergency services are an emotional issue, especially in Victoria, where the CFA has been responsible for saving lives and homes, famously on Black Saturday in 2009, and most recently on the Surf Coast over Christmas last year. It has been all over the front pages of the Herald Sun, with CFA volunteers and residents affected by Black Saturday quoted in an attempt to attack Andrews. Do people really understand the intricacies of the deal? Probably not — but when Victorians consider who they trust more, the heroic CFA or a politician, the Premier is not going to come out of this battle unscathed.
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Thanks for the overview on this one. I’ve been trying to get an understanding of the issues and the sides on this story for the past week without much success. Whenever something like this arises and doesn’t make too much sense I assume that the issues are much deeper that those being discussed at the time. I’m sure that having the federal pollies jump in will really help the debate… probably not.
I tend to side with the professionals over the amateurs in these issues. They know their stuff so much better, and volunteer organisations tend to be led by good hearted people who are out of their depth, or autocrats who are also out of their depth.
Same goes for professional lifeguards and volunteers. Not questioning the value of the volunteers or their work, just who I would be taking advice from.
Me too, after all we wouldn’t want a volunteer pink lady to do surgery on us would we?
What crap! You are shitting on over 1000 Brigades full of Labor, Liberal and Green voters. Quite simply, Victoria could not pay for a fire service to cover the whole of Victoria. It would be billions of dollars. All they want is some respect and say how they run their Fire Service.
Your total disrespect of local knowledge and ability in regards to country volunteer firefighters means you’d put your life in the hands of a six year experienced firefighter fighting a fire in a place he’s never been before vs a local who’s seen dozens of fires over multiple years in the same area, who knows the tracks and terrain? We disagree who I’d trust my life with
Yeh id trust the person who has probably lit that same fire!
If volunteers want greater roles and responsibilities they should put in the years of training and be a professional firey instead of this bleating.
The things the silly report said are that the EBA is discriminatory against pregnant women, the disabled and the old as if anyone wants any of them near a damn big fire in the first place.
Last time I looked people who are volunteers have zero rights and are literally slave labour for state governments – perhaps they wanted to train in the toxic hell hole and be paid shit wages too? Just to be fair.
Because while Truffles pretends to care and gets involved to bash the union involved the union are in the right and if Truffles house was on fire he would demand the damn bosses and well trained fireys come and fight it.
“If volunteers want greater roles and responsibilities they should put in the years of training and be a professional firey ”
It’s an ironic statement, because the UFU’s Peter Marshall is ranked as a Leading firie. Not even a Station Officer, let alone a Commander. His firefighting experience consists of hose-dragging, not commanding or making wide-ranging operational and management decisions affecting the lives of firies and the public… but he is demanding the right to do so, and to second-guess or contradict the decisions of those who ARE highly skilled in these areas.
As usual, the media has been hopelessly biased on this issue. This is hardly surprising from the HUN given that it is just a propaganda outfit for the Libs. But Fairfax is even worse. Characterising the insertion of employee consultation clauses as a ‘takeover’ of the CFA is moronic. It may be annoying to people who are used to getting their own way but it is not a takeover. In countries like Germany, consultation provisions are constitutionally required. Only an idiot would suggest that then unions run all the companies in Germany. The Liberals, and their fellow travellers, hate the idea that the people who actually do the work should have any say in how it is done – even if their safety depends on it. After all, when was the last time one of the CFA Board was injured fighting a fire. Most of the few hundred people who demonstrated yesterday were staunch anti Labor voters. That’s why they are so easily fooled by manipulators such as Guy. Whether the media is manufacturing a split between the Premier and the Minister it is hard to know for sure. If she is backg-rounding the media outside of Cabinet, well then, indeed there is a split. But, therefore, she should be sacked for not honoring the concept of Cabinet confidentiality and I would expel her from the ALP as well. Labor voters are sick and tired of self interested white anting of leaders. If it is all made up, then the media stands even more condemned. It appears that there are more than 1200 CFA stations. In just 34 of them do paid CFA officers work along side volunteers. It would be interesting to know just how this new EBA affects arrangement at these 34 with respect to the arrangements that are current in place. The idea that volunteers should order around full-time experts is a bit bizarre. Imagine if volunteer police (Miss Marple) were able to order around paid officers or volunteer soldiers were able to order around the professional military. Finally, the contempt shown by the media, and even this article, to Commissioner Roe is disgraceful. FWA Commissioners are drawn, in roughly equal numbers, from employee and employer organisations. Decisions and recommendations are always discussed “in-house” to ensure they are fair and give due weight to the submissions from the parties to the EBA. There is no evidence that his background has had anything to do with his recommendations, especially since he has been with FWA for many years and no such allegations have ever been made before. But it is typical of the anti-democratic bunch of Liberals that we have these days. Deliberately undermining the courts, and other judicial or quasi judicial bodies, when they don’t get they own way is a daily event. They seem to have little regard for the importance of impartiality in these bodies for the stability of our democracy. Look at places that are not democracies and you will see what I mean.
“The idea that volunteers should order around full-time experts is a bit bizarre. ”
Come to NSW. It happens all the time, and works well, because incident management positions are based on skill experience and qualifications, not rank or whether or not you get a payslip.
As with the SES, I do not want leaden bureaucracy and time servers which is the antithesis of volunteer communalism, but I do want them well resourced.