Firefighters' protest at Shire Hall

Firefighters protest in Gloucester against shift pattern changes

Transcript

00:00Working in the fire service, how is it going to impact their day-to-day life if it goes

00:12ahead unchanged?

00:13We won't see our families, we'll see our families a lot less, our children we'll see a lot less,

00:18they'll be in bed or we'll be taking them to childminders if they're available before

00:24then, but they're rarely available, so a lot of people will be forced out of the job.

00:28There's the choice between childcare, no one can leave their child at home alone, so what

00:34do we do?

00:35We quit our jobs, so experience will go, people who care for elderly, relatives will have

00:42to change all that around, again at a cost to us, Gloucestershire is one of the lowest

00:46paid fire services in regards to continuing professional development, maternity, we're

00:53not paid for any extra skills, we're not paid for driving, we're the lowest provision

00:57in policy and pay and enough is enough, this is why so many people are here today.

01:03Do you think, are you hopeful that councillors are going to take on board today and are you

01:07hopeful that the council will listen, obviously this is a scrutiny committee, how are you

01:12feeling, optimistic?

01:14I'm glad that the fire scrutiny committee recognised the detrimental effect it's going

01:18to have on firefighters.

01:20I hope the council will listen, I think it would be poor to ignore 80 plus firefighters

01:27and the scrutiny committee who did a really non-biased evaluation of everyone they selected

01:32firefighters themselves to talk to, they understand the difficulties and how much this is going

01:37to affect firefighters.

01:38We understand because we are the firefighters, if the chief and the council ignore it, I

01:45think that's really poor, how can you ignore something that's really happening right now

01:50and just put your glasses on and forget that it exists.