Money for reform: the Blairite mantra must apply to firefighters too

For Britain's firefighters to throw away public sympathy for their claim for higher pay requires either real malice or real incompetence on the part of their union's leadership. Of all public sector workers, only nurses come close to firefighters in earning uncritical support from the general public.

And yet the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) puts that deep fund of respect in peril with a claim for a 40 per cent pay rise, an obstructive attitude towards the mere suggestion of changes to the shift system and, now, a decision to strike which will put lives at risk.

Of course, the decision to strike was taken by a democratic ballot of the union membership, and it is a measure of the strength of feeling that they are prepared to go so far. But this is an outcome which could and should have been avoided if more imagination had been shown by the FBU and the Government.

The firefighters have a good case (a) for more money and (b) for modernising the formula which has settled their pay since the last strike in 1977. But that case is not so strong that it could justify a single avoidable death. There must be better ways for the FBU to draw attention to its case than striking, but the union's left-wing leadership is poorly equipped to think of them.

Its case is not even strong enough to justify the claim for a 40 per cent rise. Much of the arithmetic of the firefighters' grievance is suspect. As a group, firefighters have done reasonably well since 1977. Contrary to myth, they have done better than most other groups in the public sector and their pay has always increased by more than inflation. Their current pay, £21,531 a year, is more than that earned by half the full-time workforce.

That was what the 1977 formula was designed to do, and for a long time it succeeded in its aim of avoiding the need for strike action. But the employers have made a poor fist of countering the FBU's propaganda about how poorly-paid its members are.

It is also true, however, that the formula is out of date. Linking firefighters' pay to that of male manual workers is not only sexist, it has produced dwindling returns in recent years.

The formula ought to reflect the fact that society as a whole owes firefighters a special debt. The reward for their contribution should be set in relation to the incomes of the population as a whole, so the formula ought to fix firefighters' pay in relation to average incomes rather than the earnings of any particular group.

But this dispute does raise the issue of whether pay ought to be set by national bargaining at all. And it also draws attention to the FBU's refusal to enter discussions about changing working patterns. It seems probable, to put it at its mildest, that the fire service could be organised more efficiently if it were not bound by the two-shift system which is even older than the pay formula.

Tony Blair is right to insist that the principle of more money for reform applies to the fire service as much as to other public services. But it may be that the only way to achieve reform would be to devolve pay bargaining.

A review body could fix a new formula to provide a minimum pay level – more than 4 per cent higher than current pay but less than 40 per cent higher. It could then be up to local authorities to offer more money in return for flexible working patterns to suit local conditions, including local labour market conditions.

The Government should not have allowed FBU members' resentments to build up to such a pitch. But now it has no choice but to pay up. The best it can hope for is to ensure that the money has strings marked "flexible working practices" firmly attached.