OXFORD, ENGLAND -- It's 4.30 p.m. and already it looks like a foggy night inOxford. Outside the firehouse off Holybush Row, eight firefighters sit likehomeless people around a metal drum raging with flames. They wear their beat-up,grayish fire jackets along with blue jeans and sneakers. With a fire ax onechops wooden pallets and feeds splinters to the drum.Others lounge in seats removed from fire engines and sip tea. Each time apassing car honks hello, the firemen raise an enthusiastic arm in salute.Inside the firehouse, the largest in Oxfordshire, a table full of doughnuts, candyand leaflets stands beside boxy European fire trucks. A large banner that had borne the words, "Smoke Kills, Get an Alarm!" has been flipped over and now reads, "FAIR PAY FOR FIREFIGHTERS."
These striking firefighters -- the latest work stoppage ended Friday --are among the 50,000 in England who haveplunged Tony Blair's government into the nation's worst labor dispute in years.While some of the firefighters' demands have been far-fetched -- their originalbargaining position sought a 40 percent pay increase -- the way Blair has dealtwith the problem over the last several weeks suggests disregard for coreconstituencies and further reinforces New Labour's decidedly conservativeshift.
Negotiations have revolved around issues of pay and control. Thefirefighters' starting pay is 21,531 pounds per year; the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) is askingfor an increase to 30,000 pounds, which, it says, is commensurate with otherprofessions in the official "associate, technical and professional" categorythey are relegated to by government statisticians. Downing Street has counteredby offering a 16 percent pay increase, but only if the FBU submits to a governmentprogram of "modernization" -- which means closing fire stations andconsolidating labor. In other words, cutting jobs.
Sound familiar? A similar conflict just played out in New York City.Last month, the city and the Uniformed Firefighters Association finally concluded a contentious two-years of bargaining by retroactively awardingfiremen a modest pay increase of 10 percent for 2000-2002. New York'sfirefighters rank only seventh in average pay in cities with more than 1million residents. On Nov. 22, The New York Times gamely announced its support for an unpopular component of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed budget cuts: the closing of obsolete fire stations. (A deal between Bloomberg and the New York City Council has staved off the closing of those stations, at least for now.) While both the conflict in New York and the dispute in England have featured firefighters battling bottom-line bureaucracies, Blair has dealt with his situation differently than Bloomberg did -- and his actions point to a deepening gulf between the Labour Party and Britain's unions.
" 'Modernization' is their catchword," David Patterson, an Oxford firefighter,tells me, referring to Labour. "My initial thought when they say 'modernization' is a better workingenvironment. But it means cutting jobs. Then they can say the FBU opposes'modernization.' They can say the union is intransigent."
Confrontational rhetoric seems to be one element of Blair's strategy. Helaid down the gauntlet in a Downing Street news conference on Monday. "This isa strike you cannot win," Blair said to the nation's firefighters. "Itwould not be a defeat for thegovernment; it would be a defeat for the country." Actually, it might turn outto be a defeat for the government. The longer the action goes unsettled, theworse things get for Labour. Polling numbers suggest that the public stronglysupports the firefighters' claims. In survey results released at the outset of the latest eight-day strike -- two weeks ago -- by TheGuardian, 62 percent of all potential voters (including a significant 55 percent of Labour voters) were unhappy with the way the government has handled the situation. Meanwhile, support for the strikers continues to creep up: 53 percent of those polled support the strike. The prime minister has also succeeded in angering other unions: On Nov. 26, members of the teachers' union marched through London in solidarity with the firemen.
Bloomberg would have never resorted to such language, certainly not afterSeptember 11. While the fact that English firemen can strike atall is the product of an English politics less hostileto unions than America's, the chief patron of pro-union policies in England --Labour -- appears these days to be abandoning its historical role. And so itis perhaps not surprising that comparisons are being made between Blair andEngland's most legendary foe of unions: former Prime Minister MargaretThatcher.
Blair has not exactly rushed to dispel the comparison to Iron Maggie. "Blair has done a Maggie" read a front-pageheadline of The Sun last month. Asked whether that was an accurate characterization, Blair responded that his negotiations are done his "own way." "Whether that is Maggie or not," he added, "I leave you to speculate."
Moreover, it's not clear that Blair has negotiated in good conscience. Two weeks ago, government and union negotiators seemed settled on a 16 percent pay increase.Then Blair intervened. He said he would approve 16 percent only if thefirefighters agreed to "modernize." But he also said he would sign off on a 4 percent increase with no strings attached. In other words, Britain'sfirefighters are highly efficient as long as they don't ask for too muchmoney.
He had better be careful, though, about the way his stance filters through the Labourranks. Already one junior minister has been forced to resign for exaggeratingthe party line. Richard Simpson, the deputy justice minister responsible forfire service in Scotland, was overheard at a dinner party criticizing thefirefighters. "These people aren't socialists, they're protectionists, they'refascists -- the kind of people who supported Mussolini," he reportedly said. "Wemust not give in to these bastards."
Meanwhile, the country braced itself during a rough last week. The firestrike crippled day-to-day business around the country. Twenty-two Londontube stops were shut down because of safety concerns. Municipal buildingssuch as libraries closed doors early. And military personnel -- who hadtemporarily taken over firefighting duties, but had only a minimum of fourweeks' training -- coped with a rash of hoax emergency calls. FBU members,by contrast, have 11 weeks of basic training followed by a two-yearprobationary period.
In the latest development, Andy Gilchrist, the leader of the union, announced yesterday that he has decided to suspend the eight-day strike -- which had been slated to begin tomorrow -- while firefighters and the government engage in talks with a conciliator. The conventional wisdom is that the move was based on the FBU's desire to maintain public support and its need to satisfy squeamish firefighters, who go unpaid during the strikes, as Christmas approaches.
The process has become "too politicized," Gilchrist said atyesterday's news conference. But his new tactic is certainly a political one: It seems designed to bait Labour into softening its position and providing a concession of its own. The way Downing Street responds to this overture may signal just how far to the right Labour has indeed swung.
At 4:30 p.m. on a recent day, a man pulled his car up outside theOxford firehouse to askwhether he might buy one of the caps a fireman wears. It's black, with nylonflames and the FBU seal stitched on. "It's almost bigger than the fireservice," Patterson, the firefighter, says to me. "It's now about the publicsector."
Asher Price is a former editorial assistant at The New Republic. He studies comparative social policy at OxfordUniversity.