Invercargill career firefighters are not giving up on better working conditions for staff, with a 7th strike set down for Boxing Day.
Station officer Aaron Ramsay, also the union representative in the south, said a meeting held on Tuesday December 23rd will confirm if it’s going ahead or not, but there is also another strike planned for January 2.
Negotiations with FENZ continue to fail and stations around the country are having to be looked after by volunteer fire fighters during the strikes.
Aaron said last week there was one callout during the lunchtime strike - a minor car accident right out in front of the station.
He warned that the strikes were likely to continue, but did acknowledge that FENZ appeared to have more resolve this time.
“They will be wanting to deal with it at some stage, but the longer it goes on, the less we get paid,” saying none of the expired contracts will be back dated.
FENZ and the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union have been in bargaining talks for a collective employment agreement for paid firefighters since July 16, 2024.
Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler thanked New Zealanders for their extra care during the last strike, but the next round of bargaining with the Employment Relations Authority is not due until the end of January.
She urged the NZPFU repeatedly to call off their strikes because there is no good reason for continuing to put the community in harm’s way while both parties are in facilitation.
"We hope the facilitation process introduces some realism into discussions. The NZPFU’s most recent settlement proposal was more than three times higher than our offer prior to facilitation, which we believe was fair, sustainable, and reasonable, and in line with other settlements across the public service.
"That settlement was a 6.2 percent increase over three years.”
FENZ said it has also been investing in replacing its fleet, including 317 new trucks since 2017 and have another 78 on order.
This includes taking possession of 15 new firefighting trucks which are bound for metropolitan paid firefighters over the next few months.
Invercargill’s ladder fire appliance, which serves as far away as Queenstown, is the very last of its kind for the New Zealand market, and Aaron said they have no replacements in the pipeline, the oldest of these appliances were built in 2004.
But the plan is to send it to a Christchurch station which is busier, and swapped out with an older model from the Garden city.
Aaron said he really felt for new career fighters that have only joined the ranks in the past five years, as industrial action is all they have known.
Calling them the ‘lost generation,’ he said their perception of FENZ as an employer is far from ideal, and not what they signed up for.
“They say we need a change in culture but people are not motivated to work overtime because it’s not an attractive place to work.”