WITH depressing predictability comes news that the Town firefighters are locked in a pay dispute with the Public Sector Remuneration Committee.

From the minute details emerged of the settlement won by the airport firefighters in April last year it was odds-on that their Arsenal colleagues and the PSRC would find it impossible to agree a deal.

The Town firefighters, understandably, will have taken one look at the airport agreement and believed they were just as deserving.

After all, they also work unsociable shifts and are expected to cover at short notice colleagues who fall sick and, of course, they too have to be willing to put their lives on the line.

The difficulty, of course, lies in the quite extraordinary deal struck by airport firefighters.

Whether you believe the total deal to be worth 16% (as a disgruntled member of the previous PSRC calculated) or look simply at the baseline figure of a 7.8% increase in pensionable pay it was a ground-breaking deal.

Added to that 7.8% were all sorts of goodies, ranging from a 3% rise in non-pensionable pay every three years and another 3% for meeting training needs every four years. Oh, and some undisclosed standby payments and a one-off sum.

Of course, tied to that were several strings, including a no-strike deal, guaranteed airport cover and extra work – but the total package appeared  jaw-dropping in its generosity.

Critics claimed it would open the floodgates for other public bodies but there was always one group of States employees bound to pay greater attention than any other: Town firefighters.

They, too, have battled for years with the much-maligned States pay bargaining system.

The ‘one-size-fits-all’ system has been thoroughly discredited by a series of reports, most notably the £170,000 tribunal of inquiry.

That report demanded the PSRC role must change, politicians should back away and overall responsibility be handed to the Policy Council.

Interestingly, it also argued that PSRC placed too much reliance on third parties such as an industrial disputes tribunals to resolve disputes.

Little has changed.