Firemen call off airport strike after Minister steps in with cheque

Press, 17 May 1978, Page 1

Firemen call off airport strike after Minister steps in with cheque

Christchurch Airport was closed to all but light aircraft most of yesterday after a surprise strike by Christchurch crash firemen over their long-standing insurance dispute. The strike was resolved, and the airport reopened, just as dramatically.

The firemen’s return to work was helped by the intervention in the dispute of the Minister of State Services (Mr Gordon). The strike forced 26 domestic flights to be cancelled, and three international flights delayed. About a thousand travellers were affected. The crash firemen gave notice of direct action after a meeting at 7 a.m. yesterday. They went off duty at 10 a.m. and did not return unti' 4 p.m. Flights resumed almost immediately, and by late last evening most of the backlog of passengers had been cleared. One special flight was arranged to take passengers to Auckland. This left at 10 p.m. Three international flights from Australia were cancelled, but when the strike was over passengers from Australia were brought in on two flights, and outward passengers left on these aircraft. The firemen struck as a protest against one man allegedly not getting a promised medical insurance payment.

The regional secretary of the Public Service Association (Mr J. M. McKenzie) denied that it was a “wildcat” strike. The P.S.A. executive had given 14 days notice to strike, he said, but that notice had been withdrawn on Monday after it was thought that a payment was to be made to the firemen who had been declared medically unfit.

He said that while he was being • given this assurance .rom the State Ser* ices Commission, •‘someone” was apparently telling the Ministry of Transport in Christchurch that although the insurance company (Lloyd’s of London) accepted liability, the entitlement to payment on the policy would depend on what alternative employment could be found for the fireman. The men were also told

by the Ministry of Transport that the man would get only 20 per cent of the “head sum,” not the 40 per cent, promised by the State Services Commission, he said. Mr Gordon, who was familiar with some, of the background to the dispute, stepped in when he learnt that the mei had resorted to direct action. He authorised the making of a cheque for $9600, or 40 per cent of the head sum, to the affected crash fireman. When this payment was made at 4 p.m., the men returned to work. Earlier, they had agreed to come back to stand by for the landing of a giant United States Air Force CAS Galaxy transport aircraft. During the strike, the airport was closed to all aircraft over 5700 kg for “reasons of public safety,” said Mr F. A. Cox, local regional director of the Civil Aviation Division of the Ministry. Mr Cox had been asked why the decision to use the airport was not left to the discretion of pilots. Mount Cook Airlines, for instance, flies its Hawker Siddeley 748 s into several airfields which do not have the sophisticated fire-fighting services at Christchurch.

Mr Cox said his department was responsible for over-all safety and it was for that reason that the blanket closing had been applied. There were- limited fire-fighting facilities at airfields served by Mount Cook, but “the bigger the airport, the greater the traffic and the likelihood of an accident.” Mr Cox added that although a pilot could not nominate Christchurch on a flight plan as an alterna» tive landing place when it was officially closed, he could still elect to use it in an emergency.

As it happened Mount Cook Airlines transferred most of its flights yesterday to Timaru. Dealing with the dispute, Mr McKenzie said that crash firemen at all New Zealand airports would be looking at the compulsory health insurance policy — subsidised by the Ministry — to decide whether they wanted to continue with it. The crash firemen's delegate (Mr F. M. Rae) said that the men were upset that they, had to cause disruption to the travelling public “but when all other avenues were exhausted we had no alternative but to take direct action.”

It was the only occasion that crash firemen at the

airport had walked off the job, and the men had given two hours notice to allow aircraft in the air to land, he said. The P.S.A. and the crash firemen settled on the terms of an insurance policy, in 1976, but apparently when the policy was drawn up its wording was different on at least two, points. The original agreement specified that “when an operational rescue fireman is declared medically unfit he shall receive 40 per cent of the head sum” (i.e. 40 per cent of $24,000). It also said that in the following six months the Ministry of Transport was to try to find alternative employment. If it was not found, the position was to be terminated and the man paid the difference between the 40 per cent and the head sum. When the Christchurch fireman was declared unfit in November, the Ministry said that he was “temporarily” unfit. He was not declared “permanently” unfit until March. The Ministry also said that the policy provided for the payments to be made by instalments of 20 per cent, rather than in one instalment of 40 per cent, as was apparently authorised yesterday by Mr Gordon.