“Emergency services are heading for disaster” – say academic researchers

Continued attacks on public sector employment in the age of austerity have left frontline emergency services bereft of morale, stressed and under-valued, concludes new research by a University of Wolverhampton industrial relations expert.

Spending cuts from central government have left managers in the blue-light emergency services facing an increasingly fraught labour problem according to Professor Roger Seifert of the University’s Business School.

Professor Seifert, along with Dr Kim Mather at Keele, carried out a series of interviews with emergency service personnel and union representatives for the research, published in the journal Capital & Class.

The need to cut costs while protecting frontline emergency services has led to intensified and extended working conditions for many emergency service personnel, with their managers under increasing pressure to do more with less in the climate of austerity.

The researchers found that service standards in England’s Fire, Ambulance and Police services are compromised by austerity policies that compel managers to implement changes to their workforces, in spite of concerns among staff and their unions.

The research identified that different management strategies deployed across emergency services have led to low morale, poor employee relations and inappropriate workforce organisation, with potentially disastrous outcomes for the emergency services should this pattern continue.

Creeping privatisation, the civilianisation of the workforce, the redefinition of job boundaries and the rise of cheaper ‘assistant roles’ (such as Police Community Support Officers and ambulance technicians), are all cited as management responses to the austerity challenge.

The research suggests that these strategies bring increased risk to the public – through a weakening in community relations among Police Forces, lower-skilled or underqualified crews staffing ambulance responses, or the neglect of crucial fire and accident prevention work in favour of emergency response calls in the Fire Service, particularly in rural areas.