The New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU) has issued a new notice of industrial action to begin on March 23 and has proposed restarting bargaining with Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) using an independent third party, marking a further phase in a multi‑year employment dispute with potential implications for the country’s levy‑funded fire and emergency system and insurance risk frameworks.
According to the union, the new round of action will focus on bans covering administrative and other non‑emergency duties rather than front‑line response. The NZPFU has said the public should not see material changes to emergency services as a result of the measures, which sit alongside existing one‑hour strikes at midday every Monday and Friday. Those one‑hour stoppages, which affect career‑staffed stations, will continue as part of the wider programme of industrial action. The NZPFU said more than 93% of members who attended 25 meetings across its 19 locals in February voted to support both the additional bans and the continuation of the rolling strikes.
In a letter to FENZ, NZPFU national secretary Wattie Watson said the membership continued to support the union’s bargaining position and its focus on work health and safety. Watson said the union would “continue to fight for a fair and reasonable collective agreement that includes the necessary safe systems of work.” To change the dynamics of the talks, the NZPFU has suggested a structured process involving a third party who played a key role in resolving the 2022 bargaining dispute between the same parties. The union has stated that, because of this person’s earlier involvement, they are “well-equipped to understand the issues from both sides of the table and unique circumstances of the work our members undertake in protecting the community.”
The latest notice takes effect while FENZ and the NZPFU are already engaged in facilitation ordered by the Employment Relations Authority (ERA), following a period of industrial action that began in August 2025. Deputy national commander Megan Stiffler said in a recent statement that FENZ requested facilitation because there was “a significant gap between what we were offering and the NZPFU’s expectations.” She said FENZ’s pre‑facilitation remuneration proposal represented an average 6.2% increase over three years and aligned with recent public‑sector settlements, but was “three times less than the NZPFU’s settlement proposal.”
FENZ has outlined that, under that proposal, average senior firefighter base salaries would move from about $81,000-$87,000 to roughly $86,000-$93,000 over the term, excluding overtime and allowances. The organisation has also indicated that overtime and allowances currently add close to $39,000 on average to annual pay, and that average senior firefighter remuneration has risen 37% over the past decade, which it contrasts with earnings growth across the wider workforce. Stiffler said the organisation believes industrial action should be suspended while facilitation continues.
The present dispute reflects two consecutive bargaining cycles since 2019 that have combined pay and conditions with organisational design, safety, and funding questions. The first cycle, from 2019 to 2023, coincided with a major FENZ restructuring process, negotiations for the 2021-24 collective agreement, and a disagreement over how overtime worked on public holidays should be calculated under the Holidays Act. The NZPFU subsequently obtained an Employment Court ruling on holiday‑pay calculations and a 2022 collective settlement for the 2021-24 term reported at about $145 million, including cumulative wage increases and health and wellbeing measures.
As the 2021-24 agreement neared its June 30, 2024, expiry, FENZ has said it commenced bargaining for a successor deal in mid‑July 2024. The NZPFU has described much of the initial period as preparatory work, saying the first day it considered substantively focused on bargaining took place on Sept. 5, 2024. On June 13, 2025, FENZ presented a three‑year remuneration proposal it said amounted to around 5.1% in total pay increases, alongside changes to allowances that it linked to broader public‑sector guidance. Union members rejected the package after internal meetings, with the NZPFU noting that firefighters had not received a pay increase since July 2023 and arguing that, spread over the five‑year period from 2021, the offer would produce comparatively low average increases.
From August 2025, NZPFU members implemented a mix of work bans and one‑hour national stoppages. FENZ then applied to the ERA for facilitated bargaining, which was granted in December 2025. In the same month, the NZPFU and the Public Service Association (PSA) jointly challenged a FENZ restructure proposal at the ERA that could disestablish about 140 roles and affect roughly 700 positions, mainly in non‑operational areas. As at mid‑February 2026, no new collective agreement is in place for the post‑June 30, 2024, period, facilitation continues, the restructure challenge remains before the ERA, and industrial measures are ongoing.
The evolving industrial campaign is relevant to the assessment of fire protection, operational resilience, and loss outcomes for property and motor portfolios. The continuation of one‑hour strikes creates recurring periods in which the configuration of response in career‑staffed urban stations can differ from standard deployment models. FENZ has indicated that, during strike periods, neighbouring volunteer brigades will respond to more calls in affected areas.
Although life‑threatening emergencies and incidents requiring specialist equipment are prioritised, variations in staffing levels, appliance availability, and turnout times during industrial action can influence how quickly some events are contained. For large commercial, industrial, infrastructure, and dense‑urban risks, this may increase the probability that certain fires escalate, with potential effects on severity distributions and the frequency of large losses.
These operational dynamics form part of the protection environment that underpins assumptions on probable maximum loss, expected loss ratios, and rating relativities across occupancies, construction types, and locations. Some insurers may revisit risk‑engineering requirements for higher‑exposure risks, including expectations around fixed suppression, compartmentation, early detection systems, and on‑site response capability, particularly where assets are concentrated in areas most affected by the dispute. Reinsurers assessing New Zealand property and catastrophe portfolios may also consider how repeated industrial action and any enduring changes in FENZ’s structure or resourcing affect their view of protection levels, which can influence treaty pricing, attachment points, and coverage conditions.
The NZPFU-FENZ dispute is unfolding within a funding model under which about 95% of FENZ’s operating revenue is raised through levies on home, contents, and motor insurance policies, with the remainder sourced from other government and non‑levy funding. FENZ operates a network of around 14,900 personnel, roughly 1,300 appliances, and close to 600 stations, responding to about 89,000 incidents a year. If facilitation, ERA processes or any eventual settlement lead to higher permanent pay scales, workforce changes, or an expanded scope of responsibilities, FENZ’s long‑term cost base could rise. Options available to decision‑makers would include adjusting levy rates, increasing direct Crown funding, or reprioritising expenditure within FENZ, each with different impacts on service delivery and cost allocation.
Any increase in the fire and emergency levy would add to existing affordability pressures in property and motor lines, especially for catastrophe‑exposed property, higher‑risk occupancies, and portfolios already affected by construction cost and repair inflation. Because insurers invoice and collect the levy as part of premiums, they may also need to explain premium movements where statutory charges and risk‑based pricing are both contributing to outcomes linked to the trajectory of the NZPFU-FENZ bargaining process.
