Strikes?

[Peachey]

What do you think of all these strikes recently?

I think the Fire Fighters were well out of order!

[PoofBird]

any specific strike, and why did they strike?
some source-urls to get us started maybe?

and maybe tell us why you think they were out of order?

a debate needs some arguments to get started ;)

[Peachey]

Ok lets talk about the Fire Strike first then

I think they were out of order beacause they were endangering the lives of lots of people.

The army had to fill in while the war in irac was starting!

What do you think?

[Hydralisk]

I shall explain.

The fire-fighters of the UK went on strike, asking for a 16% increase in their saleries(which is a LOT).

Now, that would have been OK(ish), If the war in Iraq hadn't started

but it had.

So half our army Kicked ass + chewed bubble-gum in iraq, and the other half took over the fire-fighting.

Not sure how many people died as a result of this selfishness.

personally I think they should get a good kick up the arse for that.

Phew! finished.

[PoofBird]

Ok,

i figure that the firemen, as they risk their lives everyday, know very well how dangerous their strike is.
As they jeopardize their own lifes to save others, they will not ever think lightly about this strike. Human life means a lot to them.

So if they go on a strike, it must be very important to do.
So important, that they feel risking a few human lifes is worthwhile in the long run.

This tells me they really need that money, or they will be not be able to do a good job in the foreseeable future, and maybe no new firemen will apply for jobs, or will be working without proper training...

it sounds to me, they've got a point.

[Peachey]

Hydra i dont think eny people died (none were reported eny way)

But there realy are people just queing up to be firemen.

And im sure evryone respects the things that firefighters do but i still think that they were wrong.

And the leader guy, Andrew Gillagin (I think thats the name) was caught spendin £800 on a CURRIE and wine of course!

[Death]

Originally posted by Peachey


And the leader guy, Andrew Gillagin (I think thats the name) was caught spendin £800 on a CURRIE and wine of course!

trust daily mail to get all the impartial facts :rolleyes:. although i feel that perhaps there was a risk in performing the strike, as poofbird said they risk their lives daily. in fact i belive only one person died during the strike and she couldnt have been saved regardless. the firemen and women involved most likely did deserve a break and perhaps a raise is what they need. however alot of opposition came from taxpayers whose money is often being misspent (an obvious example is the 'war on terror' but its debatable) i do not think the fireman deserve a 'kick up the arse' but on the other hand one NHS nurse pounted out that if they went on strike, people would die and quickly for that matter, whoever her point was more of an attack on the fireman rather than an observation that they couldnt protest similarly. i dont feel my post had much meaning, but i guess you could call it a ball roller... or a pointless piece of clutter its up to you :rolleyes:

[Hydralisk]

hmmm...... fair points made here

I really dont care about it anymore, its in the past, so forget it



until next time:isay:

[Dr-Electro]

(generically speaking) Shut up and pay the firefighters and rescue workers what they are worth. Oh, the entire combined treasury of all the governments of Earth don't have that much money. Pay them as much as you can and then add a twenty percent tip. Those people are damned well priceless. The rest of us have a tendency to take them for granted unless we are in dire peril. They are heroes every second of every day and each one deserves all her or she can get. Pay up.:D

[rabid anarchist]

quite.
The pay in the emergency services isnt exactly great.
They deserved more money than they were being paid.
And they kept troops put of Iraq which in my eyes is a plus.

But the Govt couldnt give in to thier demands because they were worried that other services would do the same..

[Flower]

The other problem the firemen faced was the fact there there is no shortage in people applying to be firemen on the wage they were paid, when there is a huge shortage of nurses and doctors applying to work the hours they do.

The firemen were also refusing to update their working practises - its a tad more complecated than them saying " we want more money" and the government saying "no!"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2002/firefighter_dispute/default.stm

[rabid anarchist]

The argument was about more than just pay - it was about modernising the fire service and changing the way people work to reflect a modern society.

Qualified firefighters will be earning an average £25,000 a year by July 2004 compared with £21,500. But future pay will be linked to modernisation.

[Beef Magic]

Despite my membership to the "Stop The Occipation of Iraq", i'm still quite divided about the war

On one side, there is the economic factor that it has on our country.

On the other, there is the joy the civilians had on their faces when their dicatior leader was effectively driven out the country - a goal the people wanted for a long time



Pay the Firemen their money for the reasons given by others.

[Death]

[even more off topic]

'On the other, there is the joy the civilians had on their faces when their dicatior leader was effectively driven out the country - a goal the people wanted for a long time'

yes but sadam left enough hate and intollerance between rival factions and religous sects under his rule to allow the friction to escalate out of control once he was taken out of power

his leaving mark is causing a terrific deal of trouble

[/even more off topic]

[Evilone]

firefighters risk their lives for a worthy cause - 100% saving lives

soldiers go around killing people, recently they have - distablised Afghanistan, resulting in power struggles, mass starvation and mass emigration and distablised the middle east completely in iraq on a lie - they never had any significant WMDs and their missile technology never threatened US or UK, even if they had a nuke it couldn't have got further than Turkey. Bang goes the WMD and "direct threat" argument.

So, brining the argument on topic again, who deserves the pay more? The firefighters rather obviously.

[Micky]

I'm a bit late on this one, but first I spotted a bit of an incorrect fact (sorry if I repeat things, I skim read the posts)

Originally posted by Hydralisk
The fire-fighters of the UK went on strike, asking for a 16% increase in their saleries(which is a LOT).

First, the NFU wanted a 40% increase, 16% was the offer laid down by the government, including modernising of the fire service (including, for example, an all-in-one call centre for 999 calls).

Now, as others have said (I'm with Flower on this), the applicants to positions ratio for the fire service was (I think) about 40 to 1, thus making a pay increase difficult to justify. I also thought that at the time the union was asking too much and most of the actual firefighters were just doing what they were told, so to speak (I'm not trying to patronise them, but I think few really felt they deserved a 40% wage increase).

The main thing that irritated me regarding the whole issue was the comparison one could make with other services, such as nurses and teachers. These jobs require (again, I may be wrong fact-wise) generally high level qualifications, which few people have, fewer of which are willing to go into such underpaid professions, hence the applicant to position ratio is much smaller than that of the firefighters. Also, imagine how much more disasterous things could have turned out if we'd had an NHS strike instead of a firefighter strike - yes the army can stand in for the firefighters, but could they really stand in for all the nurses, doctors and so on without costing anywhere near as many lives as the firefighters' strike did?

I don't normally stick my neck out, but I'd say no.

If there's one thing that irritates me in this country is the unfair treatment public services workers get, in terms of conditions and pay, in part because the government won't risk raising taxes a small amount to help fund them (something even the Lib Dems announced today probably wouldn't help them get into power).

At the end of the day yes, firefighters do an incredibly important job, as do nurses and teachers, and although the latter two had and still have a much better case upon which to make demands which could be enforced by strikes, it was the firefighters who picketed first.

[TEX_Cougar]

damn ive posted a fair bit tonight.
Anyways, when firefighters applied for the job, they know how much they are going to get paid. the same as any other job.
like paramedics want(ed?) compensation for the stress and trauma of having to deal with casualties every day. they knew what they were going to deal with when they applied.
An old manager at work used to work on the london underground line, clearing bodies of people who committed suicide by jumping onto the tracks, the job description kind of says it all really, if they asked for a huge payrise, it would be ridiculous.
Dont get me wrong, but I do appreciate and respect all these men and women who do actually do a fantastic job at all these things.
I heard on the news that some guy actually left the army to become a firefighter, which was actually better pay. the other firefighters actually forced him to quit because he was one of the people who had to drive around in the green godesses and tend to the fires while they were on strike. That i do not agree with at all.
If a HUGEEEE fire broke out in london while the strikes were going on, so big that the army couldnt handle it with iraq and all, would the fire fighters still have sat there?
I'd love to go on strike at mcdonalds, but id get the sack. Just like i would if i tried to organise a union, which under the mcdonalds contract, we cannot have. The amount of things that go on at stores globally, would get them shut down, and i would be happy.
But thats a different matter alltogether. I'll shut up now:nana: