Fire authority "breached" deal

The sustained strike by Merseyside firefighters last month was over the employer's flouting of nationally agreed procedures over the way in which firefighting is supervised.

Their union, the FBU, said that the senior management was trying to install non-uniformed officers in supervisory positions in violation of unanimous decisions of the fire service's national disputes panel.

The fire service had presented the move as an equality issue as some of the non-uniformed supervisors they were trying to install were women and some from ethnic minorities.

But FBU national women's committee secretary Vicky Knight refuted this, saying: "We want to see women in the fire service employed on equal terms and not used as political pawns."

As Labour Research went to press the union was completing its first eight days of action and was due to walk out for another eight days before the end of July. Despite this, local brigade secretary Les Skarratts said that the employers had "not made one single attempt" to resolve the dispute.

* A strike by RMT rail union members was planned for 1 August on routes between Essex and London. It follows three other strikes at the c2c rail operator over the safety role of guards.

And unions in the London borough of Waltham Forest walked out in July over education privatisation.