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Speaker 1: Whatever duper z Ellen Fire an Emergency is looking at

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Speaker 1: cutting jobs as it tries to save apparently fifty million

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Speaker 1: dollars a year. Now, a consultation document is going to

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Speaker 1: be sent to the staff next week and final decisions

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Speaker 1: will be made just before Christmas. The Fire and Emergency says,

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Speaker 1: no call takers and no firefighters are going to lose

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Speaker 1: their jobs. Warty Watson is National secretary for the union,

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Speaker 1: the Professional Firefighters Union. With us now, hey what e Hi?

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Speaker 2: How are you doing?

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Speaker 1: I'm well, thank you. So they might not cut firefighters,

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Speaker 1: but are you worried they're not going to add new recruits?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well they pretty much. They are shimmering around this.

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Speaker 2: So a part of the outcome of the twenty twenty

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Speaker 2: two settlement of our Collective Agreement was the working party

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Speaker 2: to look at the ratios of the number of firefighters

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Speaker 2: needed to ensure trucks aren't going offline, in stations aren't

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Speaker 2: closing just for shifts, just due to the pure fact

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Speaker 2: that we don't have enough firefighters. We haven't really increased

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Speaker 2: firefighter numbers much at all since the nineteen nineties, and

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Speaker 2: there's a whole lot of pressures on firefighters and training

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Speaker 2: to comments the leave of course in injuries, etc. Which

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Speaker 2: means the ratio needs to change. That work was done

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Speaker 2: fendsa's own documents and work that they wanted. They came

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Speaker 2: up with a number of two hundred and fifty two.

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Speaker 2: I think it was there was a number that they

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Speaker 2: came up with additional firefighters, and then that just seemed

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Speaker 2: to stall. We've always been really clear that that number

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Speaker 2: would be dependent on what's actually happening in the districts,

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Speaker 2: et cetera. It might not be consistent throughout. Some districts

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Speaker 2: might not need additional firefighters, but we actually have to

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Speaker 2: do that work and implement where it is absolutely needed.

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Speaker 2: They're just keep they just won't give us an answer.

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Speaker 2: They've canceled the recruit course in January next year. They're

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Speaker 2: claiming that's because we're over establishment, which is just rubbish.

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Speaker 2: What was happening was, for example, Auckland was in desperate

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Speaker 2: need of the additional firefighters. Their management worked with the

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Speaker 2: union to implement a relief roster and recruited in for

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Speaker 2: that roster to keep the stations open. And our fenders

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Speaker 2: now claiming that's only temporary and that wasn't done with

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Speaker 2: approval so we've got some real worries there. The recruit

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Speaker 2: course that was being canceled next year in January, that

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Speaker 2: actually impacts on the normal recruiting, not just if there

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Speaker 2: was going to be any additional firefighters. So I think

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Speaker 2: firefighter numbers will be affected. I don't think firefighters in

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Speaker 2: their job right now will lose their jobs.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, a little bit.

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Speaker 2: I will have it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we will be coming. Thank you for running us

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Speaker 1: through that. It's Woody Watson, Professional Firefighters Union National Secretaries.

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