Career firefighters in the south will be close to their 50th strike action protest within the next few weeks, with a nationally co-ordinated event being organised to mark the event.
The industrial dispute between Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) and the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU) will be reaching a milestone of 46 strike actions tomorrow (Friday July 17).
Firefighters have been working without a current collective agreement for over two years, and the bargaining around the table has now reached deadlock, with the NZPFU insisting FENZ meet them around the table - rather than negotiate by email.
Invercargill station officer Aaron Ramsey said FENZ are refusing to bargain if they don’t talk about the proposed restructure.
The Employment Relations Authority recently found FENZ breached good faith and its duty to consult under its collective agreement with unions, in how it handled its restructure proposal last year.
FENZ proposed in November 2025 to cut 140 positions and make changes to 700 roles.
Then this week FENZ authorised a 2.4% annual pay rise for non-union managers - adding more fuel to the fire.
Union members were offered 2% in July 2025, 1.5% from July 2026, and 1.5% from July 2027, “with nothing to reflect the time from when the contract expired July 2024,” Aaron said.
Despite the recent increase in the fire levy on insurance, Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler is proposing to reduce response across the country by cutting the number of callouts.
Callouts are times when off duty staff are recalled to station to cover appliances when other trucks are committed at calls or crews are responding out of town. These callouts ensure there is still a timely response to other incidents.
“The proposed changes to the callouts are a blanket, one size fits all approach with no real effort made to understand each district’s individual needs and risks,” Aaron said.
“It is solely aimed at cutting costs and will put lives at risk.”
Aaron said callouts are budgeted to cost around $2.7 million this year “and any savings from the proposal would likely be less than half of this. The cost of a fire death in NZ is $4.7 million so this does not seem like a good investment.”
“This is an attempt to show fiscal responsibility from an organisation that has wasted $60 million on a payroll system that will not be used, that brought 44 trucks from Europe then sent them back to Europe five years later to have them turned into fire appliances, that spent $140 million on consultants over 4 years…”
He said as a station officer it was getting increasingly harder to keep staff motivated, and the lack of collective agreement had started to “alienate” a workforce, not to mention destroy careers.
“I still take pride in what I do, but not in who I do it for.”
Career firefighters are fighting for a full enquiry into how FENZ is run and accountability for spending. They need 50,000 signatures and are still 3500 short.
Readers can help by heading to www.direemergency.nz/help and putting their name to the petition.