Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) marked its 50th strike action on July 31, 2026, with its $50 million pay offer set against a union counter-proposal it valued at more than $130 million, no successor collective agreement in place since June 2024, and an organisation simultaneously under parliamentary scrutiny over fleet management and facing a government review of the insurance-based funding model that underwrites its entire operations.
The current bargaining round follows the expiry of the 2021-24 collective agreement on June 30, 2024, with industrial action under way since August 2025 through rolling one-hour national stoppages at midday on Mondays and Fridays at career-staffed stations. The parties entered Employment Relations Authority (ERA)-facilitated bargaining in December 2025 and met seven times before the process adjourned on February 13, 2026, with no further dates agreed.
The positions remain far apart. FENZ’s acting deputy national commander Ken Cooper put its latest offer at a 2.2% pay increase from December 1, 2025, and a further 2.2% from January 1, 2027 – at a total cost of $50 million over four years – against a union counter-proposal FENZ values at more than $130 million over the same period. The NZPFU says its members have not received a pay increase since July 1, 2023, and that FENZ’s only formal offer – made in July 2025 – proposed 2% for 12 months and 1.5% for each of the two subsequent years.
The gap sharpened on July 14. FENZ’s annual remuneration review, conducted by consultants Korn Ferry, awarded non-union staff a 2.4% pay increase – a figure that exceeded the collective offer its unionised firefighters had rejected more than a year earlier. NZPFU national secretary Wattie Watson said in June: “It is long overdue for FENZ to meet with the NZPFU for the purposes of bargaining – they say they have a revised offer – present it at bargaining.”
The dispute carries institutional weight beyond the pay gap. In March 2026, the ERA found that FENZ breached its statutory good faith obligation and failed to meet consultation requirements during a November 2025 restructure affecting about 700 positions and proposing more than 150 redundancies. FENZ accepted that finding. Separately, more than 93% of NZPFU members attending 25 membership meetings in February voted to continue rolling strikes and additional administrative bans, indicating sustained membership support for the action.
During the July 31 strike window, FENZ received 21 incident calls between noon and 1pm, with 17 in strike-affected areas. Twelve were false alarms, three were medical events attended by Hato Hone St John under contingency arrangements, one was a motor vehicle collision, and one was a minor rubbish fire extinguished before volunteer firefighters arrived.
Parliament’s Governance and Administration Select Committee launched an inquiry in April 2026 into FENZ fleet issues, following what National MP Tim Costley described as “confusing and contradictory” answers from the organisation across two annual reviews and a special hearing. The July 21 hearing – reported by both The Spinoff and RNZ – was described as the final session before the committee reports to Parliament.
At that hearing, FENZ chief executive Kerry Gregory told the committee he did not disagree that the organisation should have had operational information on hand without needing outside assistance and committed to bringing in an independent adviser to review FENZ’s processes. NZ First MP Andy Foster noted FENZ had replaced only 10 type-three vehicles across its entire existence, against what he calculated as a required annual replacement rate of 10, given the average 20-to-25-year lifespan of a fire truck. The committee also heard that the two most senior people responsible for the fleet – the national fleet manager and a deputy chief executive – had both recently resigned. The select committee report had not been published at the time of writing.
For insurance professionals, the most structurally significant development running alongside the dispute is the future of the levy that funds FENZ. FENZ collects 95% of its operating revenue from levies on insurance policies. According to documents presented to the parliamentary select committee hearing in July 2026 and reported by The Spinoff, the levy collected $800 million in the 2024-25 financial year. From July 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026, only 59% of incidents FENZ responded to – including false alarms – were fire-related, according to a June 2026 ministerial release from the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), a mismatch that prompted a formal funding review
Minister van Velden indicated two alternatives when directing the review: direct Crown funding or collecting revenue through rates bills, which she said would mean more people paying a lower individual amount, according to RNZ’s reporting of the June 17 announcement. The Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ) has separately proposed a third path – a Community Protection Levy that would shift FENZ to direct Crown funding and redirect an estimated $600 million to $700 million annually toward natural hazard risk reduction. Finance Minister Nicola Willis rejected the Community Protection Levy proposal specifically at the ICNZ annual conference in early June 2026, saying: “Having a specific levy to achieve that, I don't think is necessary if you have prudent government investing in infrastructure.” The review will not affect levy rates already set for the three years from July 1, 2026.
Consumer NZ has reported the share of households cancelling insurance due to cost rose from 7% in 2022 to 17% in 2025. A levy collected through insurance premiums depends on a broad insured population sustaining it – and that population is contracting. For underwriters, risk managers, and brokers who collect and remit the levy, the convergence of protracted industrial action, fleet adequacy failures, an ERA good faith breach, and a funding model under structural review represents a set of compounding pressures on the organisation that serves as New Zealand’s primary fire response. How each resolves carries direct implications for how fire risk is priced and managed across the market.
