‘Let them eat humble pie’
Saturday 24th April 2010, 2:30PM BST.
The airport firefighters, who have been exonerated by an independent Tribunal of Inquiry over the dispute that led to them walking out in May, said questions should now be asked of former PSRC chairman Al Brouard and vice chair Tony Spruce. Pictured in the foreground are Paul Ozanne, left, Kevin Rabey and Andrew Redwood from the AFS Union Group. (Picture by Tom Tardif, 0957592)
FORMER members of the Public Sector Remuneration Committee should ‘eat humble pie’ for criticisms they levelled at airport firefighters, a spokesman for the men has said.
A Tribunal of Inquiry report into the walkout last May cleared airport firefighters of blame and said a more modern ‘partnership-based’ approach by PSRC could have led to better results.
At the airport yesterday the firefighters were celebrating the report’s conclusions.
Shift representative Paul Ozanne said the fact that they had been vindicated meant questions should now be asked of former PSRC chairman Al Brouard and vice-chairman Tony Spruce.
‘They should be chewing on some humble pie,’ he said.
Mr Ozanne said the airport firefighters had not done anything untoward but they regretted the situation that had led to the standstill at the airport on 25 May last year.
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Right….. I’m confused
Are the airport firemen now getting medals and a parade??
Does this also mean the people who had their holidays ruined are getting their money back??
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“Mr Ozanne said the airport firefighters had not done anything untoward but they regretted the situation that had led to the standstill at the airport on 25 May last year.”
My friend has a very sick little boy with leukemia and they go over to Southamption regularily for treatment. Needless to say this delayed his departure and as a result he had to be admitted to the PEH until arrangments could be made.
The airport is a vital life line to the island. Island being the operative word. Many islanders have to travel to the UK to have important medical treatment. This disrupted them as well as the people jetting off on holiday.
Something like this should NOT be allowed. I appreciate that pay review talks had broken down but for them to then go and do this was risking people’s lifes. I disagree stongly with Mr Ozanne’s view. I also don’t think celebrations were appropriate. They should have been quietly content that they weren’t pulled over the coals for this.
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Lynnie
There will always be cases of woe when systems fail. The system failed and it has been shown not to be the fault of the workers. What other voice do they have but to use their lawful guidelines.
However they were damned for holding the island ‘to ransom’. They were condemned on these threads for all manner of crimes. All they were doing was protecting their future and that’s what unions are for: to concentrate that want.
Peter Roffey, I expect an apology. During that event you were incomprehensibly attacking the working man. There was never any ‘ransom’, nor strike. I don’t believe in L Trott, but he did the right thing on this occasion. If you call that ransom, then you are wrong. It was providing time for this sort of completely obvious set of recommendations to be forced out into the public eye.
As for the likes of Sam Maindonald….
As I like saying, for no real effect really, read a book.
Without the public sector, without dedicated people, we are not a community. I keep hearing “we are a strong community”. Only if we understand what that means.
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Lynnie
What a load.
What would happen if there was fog, or ash, or ice, or gales.
It makes me laugh that the airport can be shut for 2 days for weather reasoms with no effect, if it shuts because there are not enough firemen to cover the overtime, it a disaster.
Get real.
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Lynnie: I appreciate the fact that the lack of Fire Cover last year affected many people and we are not expecting anyone to suddenly be happy about it or think it was ok. Believe me this is not even close to a celebration. It is merely the GP contacting us wanting a photo and us letting them take one. Five years of being treated like a steaming pile of c**p and being blamed almost entirely for everything that has gone wrong, being constantly told you don’t deserve anything because you do nothing all day (not actually true) and when you are doing something you get an article in the press moaning at you because there was a bit of smoke (actually reported as ‘ash’, probably to make it more dramatic due to recent events) doesn’t make you want to celebrate. We are just relieved that people can maybe now understand why things went the way they did even if they don’t agree with it. We didn’t want this to happen and don’t want it to ever happen again. We certainly don’t enjoy being portrayed as villains and getting abuse.
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Arnald
I dont respect the actions of the firefighters which lead to the resolution of this dispute.
I could have understood the need for their actions if say; They had contacted the press and LT and got nowhere… I dont believe that was the case.
Lynnie
I thought they had agreed to provide cover for all emergency flights….. Are you saying this was not the case?
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“There was never any ‘ransom’, nor strike.”
You really are a ludicrous person Arnald. You’d swear that the grass was blue and the sky was green if it fitted in with your bizarre socialist utopian vision of the world. George Orwell wrote a couple of books about people like you.
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Simon: you are correct. We did provide cover for medical flights. If any didn’t go it was because we weren’t informed of them not because we refused to cover them. As far as I am aware some fights did go that had medical cases on them because we were asked if we would provide the cover which we did.
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Steve – It’s my opinion. You get real.
How nice it would be to debate a subject without feeling it necessary to insult the other contributers.
I can of course understand your points Arnald and SM. Perhaps the problem lay with Unite. My opinion of the representation in the islands is far from favourable.
There are many comments on the way that the GP have written some stories so it may be the case with this one too. I think a lot of islanders were upset over the closure and the way this story is written, and the whole coverage really is somewhat rubbing salt in the wound.
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Simon – I’m not too sure, sorry. My friend’s little boy was going for treatment not an emergency so perhaps there was. Maybe it wasn’t used in this occasion.
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@ Lynnie
“Perhaps the problem lay with Unite”
No, it states clearly that the problem was with the PSRC.
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I wasn’t disputing what the article stated nobby, doesn’t mean I have to agree with it though. Or agree with it entirely…
SM my previous post was made before I saw yours, sorry.
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Hey Martino
You read the stuff, yeah?
No strike, just category zero; no ransom, just negotiation gone sour.
As you have said yourself, you have no idea.
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Is the official report online?
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The problem wasn’t Unite, the problem wasn’t the Firemen, they were, let us remember exonerated by an independent Tribunal of Inquiry. What part of exonerated do people not understand.
What caused the dispute was an outdated inflexible system of deciding States workers pay. Compounded by a prejudice against States Workers by many States members who just want to keep them in their place and were not interested in seeing the system change.
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“A Tribunal of Inquiry report into the walkout last May cleared airport firefighters of blame”
How bizarre, I am sure that it was their own choice to close the Airport, how on earth can the blame lie with anyone else other than the people who walked out? The blame for the causes of the walkout may lie elsewhere but not that for the actual walkout.
“There was never any ‘ransom’, nor strike.”
Arnald, I think that you will find that the Island was indeed held to ransom.
SM (above) states “As far as I am aware some fights did go that had medical cases on them because we were asked if we would provide the cover which we did.”
Thus by implication cover was withdrawn for flights that did not have medical cases on them which sounds to me like the withdrawal of labour, a strike!
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Humbug, is it not about time you got over it. There was no withdrawel of labour or walkouts just zero category. All medi cases that requested to go went!
By the way have you been up to the station for your slice of humble pie!
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Humbug:
As Geoff has stated there was a withdrawal of Category not a strike. If we had been on strike there would have been no medical flights (not fights, as I previously mentioned), no cover for emergencies, no cover for any ground incidents etc. As it happens all of this cover was still in place. I appreciate this is, or would have been little comfort for anybody who couldn’t fly but there is a difference. It is over now so I won’t bother getting into arguments or in depth discussions about it like last May, soon it will be old news whether people agree with what has happened and the subsequent results or not. We are always going to have our haters no matter what we do. Some people won’t be happy until planes crash on a daily basis just so they can see us work because after all, we just sit around drinking tea and playing pool all day! (apparently)
Over and Out
The END
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Geoff
Really, the attitude on here by many of the pro-firefighter brigade (and them themselves) sheds a different light on the real fault no matter what an independent tribunal said.
Obdurate, defensive (which says a lot) and in most cases downright petty.
Dancing around because you have your pieces of silver, only at the expense of the island as a whole, the people who pay your wages and the same people who’s faces you appear intent on rubbing it into.
Methinks you would have a different opinion if you got called from work to pick your children up because the teachers decided they had had enough.
Lets just hope you are not taken ill when the nurses chance their arm eh??
Who’s fault would it be then??
Would it be the PRSC??
Or the people who gave them the inspiration??
No doubt some “independent” tibunal would help dissolve you of all blame and clear your conscience, but most now doubt a conscience was ever there to begin with.
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Steve o,
I think you will find that in some cases you have to fight fire with fire and to achieve the desired result you cannot fault the stand togetherness of the lads up here. After all 5 years of going round in circles exhausting every avenue is not what i would descibe as stubborness, merely determined not to bend over and take it.
As for the other groups, well i sincerely hope that they get what they deserve in their next round of pay talks and should now with thanks to us as a body of men have a fair hearing which in turn if they have a good case should secure them with a rise to match. i could not agree more with respect to the nurses. However i think you will find that there are not that many locally quallified nurses around now as the states would rather offer extremely good relocation packages with bonuses to non-locals rather than keep it in house.
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geoff
“exhausting every avenue”
Did this really happen? Are you telling me the CM had been contacted prior to catagory zero?
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Simon: Yes he was but said he couldn’t intervene due to mandates, look at the fuss that was made when he did actually intervene. If you take a look at the tribunal findings it will also state that he was contacted on two seperate occasions by ourselves explaining to him the fact that we were encountering problems. This was also on behalf of our management as they had been silenced by a letter we intercepted from an unknown source within the psrc/states basically warning that it was not helping matters with our management backing our case. After all it was our airport management that wanted to introduce the on-call system similar to most other emergency services(it is no good having air search on call racing up to the airport with green lights when they would not be able to take off without the required fire cover being available because the firemen are not on call. Same apllies for medical flights and also in general day to day running of the airfield as category 6 cover cannot be compromised).
Again we provided a copy to the tribunal of this letter which should be available for all to see, failing that i still have the original. I hope that this goes some way to explain the underhand tactics we encountered and also where else in the world would a department not want to allow their own management to manage in order to remain productive and efficient and not least to reduce costs not escalate them. I think all in all over the last 5 years we went above and beyond the call of duty to sort this sorry situation and there is no way we could of done anymore, hand on heart.
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geoff
Somewhere along the way you lost much public support, despite the tribunal findings that still seems to remain the case.
I put this down to the firefighters claiming the dispute was not about money, but then going back to work once they got some!
Timing was also Im sure a big factor in determining public opinion, as the majority were bracing themselves for a downturn, you guys were demanding what seemed to amount to a double figure increase.
I guess people make up their own minds but it would also seem bringing the airport to its knees was a step either too far or too soon!
Maybe a letter to the press asking for the CM to intervene and highlighting the depth of feeling prior to any reduction in airport cover would have kept the public on side.
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Geoff has made clear what a lot of us thought at the time, that a white knight and batman, were waiting in the wings, to emerge when the firefighters took industrial action.
No doubt the wonder boys who paid the firefighters so much to return to normal working, will be made aware by other workers in the opublic sector, that what works for one section of the workforce, will be applied by others.
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