The NZPFU has today issued FENZ notices of strike action that will commence from 0001 hours on the 11 August 2025.   

Members are advised not to take any action until 0001 hours on 11 August and then only to take the actions listed in the two strike notices (available for download below).

FENZ have only offered a sinking lid offer which does not provide for any increase in wages until the date of ratification.  As NZPFU members have not had a pay increase since July 2023 in practicable terms the offer is less than 5% over 5 years.  The offer does nothing to address previous agreements “in principle” to increase staffing to ensure minimum staffing of firefighters and 111 fire emergency dispatchers or address unfair workloads for other NZPFU members, does nothing to address the dire state of the fire appliance fleet, does nothing to address occupational cancer or necessary mental health initiatives and fails to address with a range of other matters raised by the union.

In a round of National union meetings 99% of NZPFU members voted to reject the offer, 99% voted for industrial action and 97% voted for complete stoppages/strike action. 

The notices issued today are two forms of industrial action.  Notices for complete stoppages will be issued at a later date should FENZ fail to make an acceptable offer to settle the collective agreement.

The NZPFU will be meeting with Local representatives to prepare for the action that commences 11 August 2025.

The NZPFU is trying to address significant health, safety and wellbeing issues as well as ensuring fair wages and incomes. Some of these issues are:

• Despite previously reaching an agreement in principle FENZ is walking away from employing the necessary firefighter numbers and has cancelled the January career firefighter recruit course and claiming the April course may be in jeopardy.  
• Despite FENZ claiming an increase in 111 fire emergency dispatchers in the bargaining, the current offer is silent to the staffing.  FENZ is proposing radical change to staffing including considering reducing Wellington Fire Coms (one of 3 in the country) which dispatches career and volunteer appliances across the lower North Island (and other districts as required) to only operate business hours Monday to Friday.
• FENZ is robbing one community to protect the other – in New Plymouth the city is reduced to one crew/appliance being staffed while the necessary second crew is stationed 15 minutes away to support a volunteer station during business hours.  FENZ has the option of adding an additional crew/appliance to cover that volunteer station but instead chooses to halve the protection to the New Plymouth community.
• FENZ’s fire appliance fleet is failing escalating the risk of harm to the responding firefighters and the communities they respond to.  Since the 2022 negotiations not one new fire appliance has been commissioned to career fire stations with stations having to resort to taking volunteer trucks away from their communities when no working relief trucks are available. Most of the fire appliances are at life or older than FENZ’s own replacement policy. The regularity of faults and breakdowns are escalating the risk to the health and safety of firefighters, and to the communities they respond to. 
• FENZ has failed to ensure some fire stations meet required seismic standards which are required to not only protect the lives of those working within the station but to ensure the firefighters and appliances can respond to the community should an earthquake eventuate.  FENZ found the funds and urgency to move its HQ quickly when it received notification of seismic risk, but is yet to replace or remediate the Tauranga City Fire Station which has had a known abysmal seismic risk since 2014.
• FENZ is continuing to refuse firefighter occupational claims despite repeatedly being informed by ACC Review decision-makers that they are not applying the law.  FENZ continues to waste resources and costs in fighting Reviews causing significant delays in having cover and affecting access to treatment for firefighters with cancer.  FENZ is knowingly causing avoidable harm and stress to those firefighters and their families by continuing to make decisions inconsistent with the ACC legislation.
• FENZ claims to put the health, safety and wellbeing of personnel first yet is refusing to treat mental health programmes building awareness and resilience as training.  As a result the employee who suffers mental health issues due to their job are having to fund the programme and take their own leave to attend, or rely on the Union to assist with costs of the mental health training.
• FENZ has been informed of significant issues in volunteer support and career/volunteer firefighter training including workload and staffing levels that are causing harm.  FENZ has refused to even agree to a process to address those issues.
• FENZ’s failure to maintain live fire training facilities has resulted in only one facility nationwide leaving some firefighters without live fire training for many years.  The failure to implement necessary live fire training policies and procedures means firefighters’ continue to be injured and burnt even in the controlled training environment.

In unity,
Wattie Watson
National Secretary