From: mkb30@cam.ac.uk (Matthew Belmonte)
To: info@annecampbell.org.uk (Anne Campbell)
Subject: support Government's resistance to FBU demands
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 11:48:14 +0000

Dear Mrs Campbell

I write as a new member of your constituency to express my support for the
Government's hard-line strategy in dealing with the firefighters' strikes.
Firefighters are well paid, in fact they earn more than many of us academics
do, and the popularity of the job is such that there are many more applicants
than openings.  Though a modest rise may be in order, the 40% increment
demanded by the Fire Brigades Union is preposterous.

Even for a modest rise, in this climate of weak economics and budget deficits
the money has to come from somewhere.  I've spent the past twelve years living
abroad, and can say from first-hand experience that outside Britain it's quite
common to have firefighters who are trained as paramedics, dispatched by
efficient and centralised response centres that coordinate all of the emergency
services, and employed by a system that fills extra needs with overtime pay
instead of by surplus hiring.  Why can't we have that system here?  Because
Andy Gilchrist's FBU doesn't want it.

No one is proposing any redundancies.  Instead, the reduction in force
necessary to fund a pay rise would be accomplished simply by not replacing
retiring firefighters.  The firefighters' livelihoods are not being threatened.
In fact, the only thing that is threatened by the current situation is the
power of the FBU as an institution.  Mr Gilchrist's recent rhetorical attempts
to turn this dispute into a platform for an attack on New Labour make it clear
that his real agenda is one of politics, not labour, and that his concern is
for the institutional well-being of his union, not for the individual
well-being of the workers whom that union supposedly serves.

I hope that you'll support the continuing effort to limit any pay rise to a
manageable size, and to link any rise to modernisations in organisation and
work practices.

Sincerely

Matthew Belmonte
[address]