LONDON (AP) -- Striking firefighters will have to give ground on working conditions to win a significant pay rise, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday as a national walkout entered a fourth day.
``The two-day strike was wrong and dangerous, and it follows that an eight-day strike is more so,'' Blair told a news conference.
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``So pay linked to modernization is the only way that this can be resolved.''
Firefighters walked off the job Friday to back demands for a hefty pay increase. The Fire Brigades Union blames the government for derailing last-minute talks with employers that would have delivered a 16 percent raise over the next year.
The government says any raise above the level of inflation must be funded by cost-saving changes in working practices. Blair said the proposed settlement would cost the government $6.3 billion per year while committing the union only to talking about changes in work practices.
``If we were to yield to this claim, made in this way at this time, ..we would do fundamental and lasting economic damage to the economic stability - low inflation, low unemployment, low mortgage rates, we have fought so long and hard to achieve as a country,'' Blair said.
He said employers needed the freedom to change shift systems, allow overtime, require basic paramedic training for firefighters and merge fire control rooms with other emergency services.
Union leader Andy Gilchrist said firefighters were willing to discuss modernizing working practices, but accused the government of sending mixed signals.
In a Sunday newspaper article, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said the 16 percent pay deal was ``still worth talking about.'' But Treasury chief Gordon Brown said 16 percent was ``simply not affordable.''
``We need clarity and a single authoritative voice from the government,'' Gilchrist told the BBC.
Opposition Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith took the same line in the House of Commons Monday.
``Throughout this dispute the government has been woefully ill-prepared; no two ministers have agreed the same line; there's been insufficient preparation and planning over the weeks and months that there has been notice of this strike,'' Duncan Smith said.
Blair accused the opposition of trying to score political points.
``The truth of the matter is that of course, the Conservative Party ... basically agrees with the government's position'' of demanding modernization to fund a pay raise, Blair said.
Firefighters had been demanding a 40 percent raise - to take their basic salary to $49,600 - but have indicated they would consider a 16 percent increase.
Six people have died in fires since the start of the strike, which is scheduled to last eight days and has seen firefighters replaced by troops with antiquated military ``Green Goddess'' engines.
Three men and two women died in separate house fires around the country and another man died in a fire in his mobile home.
Firefighters plan two more eight-day strikes beginning Dec. 4 and Dec. 16.
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