GMB: Pay workers and protect our life-saving Coastguard service
By Louise Gilmour, GMB Scotland secretary
“You make a living by what you get but make a life by what you give.”
Scholars might insist Winston Churchill never actually said it but if he didn’t, he should have. It’s a good one.
Our country is built on our communities, which rest on the shoulders of giants – the unsung and selfless heroes giving up their time to help others.
They run the lunch clubs and food banks; organise fair days and look out for the frail; coach kids’ football teams and raise money for good causes. Without fanfare or applause, they turn up.
Sometimes, they not only change lives but save them – like the UK’s 3000 Coastguard Rescue Officers (CROs), for example.
When called, they come. Meals are abandoned, jobs left undone, family events missed, weekends sacrificed, and social lives sabotaged.
They don’t do it for money or medals, but because they believe in it.
Their civic spirit should be treasured and protected. In a perfect world, it would be bottled. Instead, it is being thrown in their face.
Until now, they could claim £11 an hour for call-outs and training. It is very far from a fortune but still, apparently, far too much for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).
Its proposal to stop remunerating these key workers has dismayed them, and should outrage the rest of us.
They met online last week to discuss the decision, with accents ranging from Cornish to Orcadian, and one, speaking for them all, said: “We don’t do it for the money, but the money lets us do it.”
The small financial compensation helps offset the time taken from their day jobs or the practical costs of being well-trained and ready to respond, protect, and serve.
The MCA revealed its plan last week, just months after a landmark legal case, supported by the GMB, won worker status for the CROs. A coincidence? Or a cynical attempt by a Government agency to subvert a court ruling, fire and rehire its workers, and betray its own people?
Our union was in Blackpool last week for congress and the donkeys on the beach would have faced stiff competition from the asses at the MCA.
Delegates backed an emergency motion calling for their cruel and ill-considered decision to be paused, discussed, and reversed.
While seeking urgent talks with the MCA, we will be writing to ministers and enlisting the support of politicians up and down our coastline, and around our islands. Many of them have already raised the alarm and understand that, if pursued, the consequences of this vindictive plan will not be seen on budget spreadsheets but in lives imperilled.
The consequences will be felt in increasing jeopardy around our seas, lochs and rivers when skilled, experienced and committed volunteers decide they can no longer justify their sacrifice.
They may have been born with civic spirit but their technical expertise and practical skills have been forged in countless call-outs and honed by rigorous training. Why risk such a priceless resource to pinch pennies? The MCA knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Any organisation stripping away the props allowing volunteers to volunteer is taking a senseless, unnecessary risk and dynamiting their own foundations.
The veteran station officer who has already written to First Minister John Swinney raising the alarm – an emergency flare revealed by The Post today – fears the MCA is committing an epic act of self-harm, threatening huge and unquantified risk to the service and our coastal communities.
He is not wrong. The MCA must stop, take a breath, thank their workers, apologise and think again.
This column first appeared in The Sunday Post. Pictures: Jo Hanley Photography
