One more last working class hero

cutting the fire service. This situation would meet with capitalisms’ approval and allow officers to ‘prove’ their
authority/masculinity. Given that, extra wages apart, there is no economic dividend for officers in cutting the fire service
(in class terms), the dividend for bossing firefighters around may be seen as a petty dividend (see Wright 1982a: 113;
Grint 1998: 148); the proof of an officers’ masculinity.
This chapter will now focus directly on the difficulties over the relations between firefighters and officers. In so
doing, it will be important to question if the gap between officers and firefighters is not really about creating a more
efficient fire service at all. It may be a struggle between two groups of men trying to prove themselves in the same arena.
On the one hand firefighters trying to prove themselves whilst firefighting and officers trying to prove themselves by
cutting the fire service which inevitably affects firefighters ability to firefight as they currently do. Section 2, provides a
clear example of how the gap between firefighters and officers may develop, by examining single tier entry promotion
(STEP) and its main dynamic shared experience. This firmly establishes that there is a gap forming between firefighters
and officers because both groups have differing expectations of shared experience. Section 3 focuses on how firefighters
separate themselves from officers by creating a distance between firefighters’ hands-on, blue-collar (masculine) skills and
officers’ white-collar (feminine) work. Section 4 investigates four key activities in the fire service where firefighters resist
officers’ attempts to ‘prove’ their authority: dynamic risk assessment; BA control; training; fire prevention/CFS. Section
5 examines some areas where male firefighters may construct their masculinity, their sexual adventures, public status and
views on female firefighters. Section 6 is a brief examination of an official dispute between FBU and officers/employers,
which suggests that the FBU provides an umbrella under which all firefighters can gather. The conclusion returns to the
debates on petty dividends.
78
5.2. THE OFFICERS
5.2.1. Single tier entry promotion (STEP)
Every officer in the fire service starts his or her career as a firefighter. Given that the Audit Commission (1995) accepts
that Chief Officers successfully control their budgets, starting at the bottom does not appear to influence the financial
efficiency of the fire service. However, successfully managing budgets is not the whole story. Government requires the
fire service to be an equal opportunities employer (Straw 2000; see also Bucke 1994). The extreme way STEP restricts
promotion to an internal labour market (ILM), locks the workforce to their employment (see Burawoy 1979), may reduce
the cost of training, facilitate close evaluation of promotion candidates and normally gets workplace approval 172 .
However, taken to the degree that it is in the fire service (where all officers must serve their time as firefighters and
receive most of their training in-house), STEP isolates the fire service from outside influences (particularly in the
management field) 173 . This encourages conservatism and the experience officers’ gain as firefighters is likely to influence
their future decisions. In particular, it is likely to lead to a perpetuation of the status quo and an institutionally
conservative organisation as senior officers choose their successors in their own image.
In respect of masculinity and homogeneity, organisations that rely solely on ILM for promotion can become
bastions of (white, heterosexual) male power (see Young 1991; Reiner 1992; Office for Public Management 1996; Owen
1996; Corby 1999: 98-99). The fire service is clearly one of those organisations and its institutionally conservative
practices have already been shown in regard to its recruitment policies. This it does by screening for masculine
understandings in recruiting a predominantly working class male, able-bodied, white and heterosexual workforce: a
situation where employing the stereotype only ‘proves’ the stereotype (see Chapters 1 and 4). As already argued
institutional conservatism requires that leaders choose their successors in their own image and it should come as no
surprise that fire service promotion can involve patronage 174 . Chris, a senior equal opportunities adviser to the fire
service, explains:
Chris:
The Fire Service recruits from a narrow band of people, unlike the police and army. This is good for
equality in that everyone gets a fair crack of the whip: no elite group or class provides the officers, as
each person has a chance to achieve full potential. But can be bad in regard to patronage.
Patronage, in the fire service restricts the promotion of “boat rockers” (Hart 1982: 159) who could challenge
tradition and/or the abilities of current officers (see Dixon 1994 175 ) and can lead to the ‘Peter Principle’ (see Peters and
Peters 1970; Buck 1997; Young 1991; Dixon 1994). Not unexpectedly, I found no officers who would argue against
STEP. There are at least three reasons for this. First, it would allow existing civilian managers in the fire service (and
outside managers) to compete with officers for their jobs. Second, outsiders with entrepreneurial/academic skills may
challenge current officers way of organising the fire service (as they did in the health service, see Lucio and MacKenzie
172 The ‘whole’ fire service support STEP (see Ord 1993; CFBAC 1994; Manuel 1999; Smith 1998; Thornton 1999).
173 It may be that STEP is a questionable ‘genuine occupational requirement’ (see Lewis 1992: 36; Palmer 1992: 72), because it not only prevents
suitably trained managers from joining the fire service at the appropriate level, it also denies access to people at those levels, who cannot meet the fire
service’s medical standards and could never successfully apply for a job as a firefighter.
174 Flanagan (1998), argues that 83% of Chief Officers admit to helping ‘suitable’ candidates.
175 Dixon (1994) suggests that in the military, where he considers many officers have lacked intellectual abilities, officers restrict and stop the promotion
of entrepreneurial officers who might be intellectually free thinking enough to challenge the system. Such a criticism might well apply to the fire service
where officers often see critique as a personal criticism of them because they are responsible for the system.