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UK fire strike talks stall
LONDON, England -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair has repeated his warning that the nation's firefighters will not achieve anything through strike action. Speaking on the last full day of an eight-day walkout by the UK's 55,000 firefighters, Blair said on Friday: "Under the existing pay formula which has been in place for 25 years, there's four percent on the table. "That's as much as anyone is getting in other parts of the public sector. "If they want more than that, it's got to be paid for by a change in working practices and people have to get round the table and negotiate on that basis. "We have got to look at the broader interests of the country. "If they want to change the existing pay formula, then fine, but not by a series of strikes that cannot be justified." Fresh talks between the Fire Brigade Union (FBU) and the firefighters' employers ended without agreement on Friday. Mike Fordham, assistant general secretary of the FBU, said as he left the talks that the government's position in the dispute had been "less than helpful." He told reporters: "The employers have made their position clear as well as that of the government. "No new offer or proposals have been put to the union." Charles Nolda, chief executive of the Employers' Organisation, said the two sides had a "useful" exchange of views during the talks. He said the talks had been "very businesslike and perfectly amicable," but stressed that the employers were now focusing on modernising the fire service. The current strike is set to end at 0900 GMT on Saturday. But the failure of any deal means that two further eight day walkouts, one planned to start next Wednesday and the other on 16 December, are still scheduled to go ahead. As with a 48-hour strike earlier this month -- the first firefighters' strike in the UK for 25 years -- the latest walkout has seen an army of 19,000 Ministry of Defence personnel providing fire cover using 820 "Green Goddess" engines.
Blair said: "The armed forces have coped brilliantly and we have learned about shift work and part-time and full-time people responding to incidents together and these are the basic changes that can be achieved. "We have learned a lot from how the armed forces have coped while the firefighters have been on strike." Blair was barracked on Friday by angry firefighters at three out of four public engagements in his North East heartland where he was met by crowds of striking firefighters and had to endure cat-calls and jeers. At a Territorial Army Centre in Darlington, he was heckled by a small crowd of striking firefighters who screamed at him to go and speak with them. An hour later he was met by a much larger, and equally hostile, crowd of firefighters on Tyneside.
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