In this edition - As a member of the Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) your union was invited to contribute to the QCU application to raise the 23% casual loading to 25%.

In this edition - I am pleased to report that your union through our work with the Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) has been involved in an application to the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission (QIRC) for a General Ruling (a decision) to raise the casual loading for auxiliary firefighters from 23% to 25%.

In this edition - A number of Auxiliary Firefighters have recently contacted UFUQ representatives and the state office about some potentially mistaken and inconsistent application across the state of the mandatory two-hour minimum payment provisions contained in Clause 22 of your award.

In this edition - This is an important time for you and your colleagues with the commencement of the new Queensland Fire Department (QFD). QFD was created to ‘enable… the Fire and Rescue Service to return to being operationally focused—a fire service run by firefighters’ (Minister Boyd 30 April 2024 Hansard page 1329).

In this edition - You are no doubt aware your union (with the help of UFUQ representatives Cairns FCO Tris Brougham and Townsville FCM Alene Arends) successfully bargained a range of significant reforms to be implemented across fire communications during the life of CA22. I thought it was time to update you on some of those.