Fire Brigades Union press release - Monday 27 October 2014
What: Meeting of European firefighters
Where: Fire Service Training Centre Westburn Drive, Cambuslang, Glasgow G72 1AA
When: 12:30pm, Tuesday 28 October 2014
Firefighters from across Europe will meet in Glasgow for a European Public Service Union (EPSU) meeting to discuss the pressures facing fire and rescue services internationally and to sound the alarm about how dangerous austerity is for all firefighters.
Austerity threatens the quality of work firefighters undertake and their ability to respond to major incidents.
Europe faces the possibility of further terrorist attacks and more extreme weather caused by climate change; at a time when firefighters, stations and engines are all being cut or being made to run as a private company in order to make profit.
Jan Willem Goudriaan, EPSU general secretary: "Firefighters will be on the front line when major incidents hit our cities, our towns and our people.
For firefighters to keep serving the public with a world class service they need investment, not cuts.
“Privatisation is a race to the bottom which endangers public safety, all so a private individual can profit from tragedy.”
Dave Green, FBU international officer, said: “Firefighters will have to unite in order to stop the failed austerity project that is taking over Europe.
“In Britain since 2010 we have seen over 5000 firefighter jobs lost, 39 fire stations closed and response times increase substantially - all because of austerity.
“Firefighters save people’s lives and are the first responders to major incidents – when they can’t do their job because their numbers have been cut, their stations closed and their engines withdrawn – it means the public suffers”.
“We owe it to the public and firefighters alike to fight for the fire and rescue service everywhere, our European network aims to bring this issue into the public sphere”
Ends
For more information, contact the press office on 02084 811 505 (will divert) or [email protected]
Alternatively call Pablo Sanchez on 0032(0) 474626633 or [email protected]
Notes
1. For national spokespeople contact the press office via the details above
2. For local and regional spokespeople, please contact officials directly via the ‘About us’ and ‘Local contacts’ menus at www.fbu.org.uk
3. High res photos of spokespeople and other images that may be useful editorially are available at http://bit.ly/FBUphoto
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