Another option put to fire brigade staff who are union members as a proposed industrial action was allowing any staff at the MFB's Burnley offices to park their car in "any vacant MFB car park including but not limited to visitor car spaces". The planned strike actions would also let staff eat "meals and drinks during rest breaks in unoccupied management offices". And there would also be, under the plan that staff will vote on, "rolling stoppages of the performance of all work for 60 seconds duration for up to five stoppages per employee during a day, on an unlimited number of days". The United Firefighters Union, which has proposed the work bans on behalf of its members, argues its members have been waiting for a new enterprise agreement to be signed since 2011. The union's secretary Peter Marshall said they were forced to take more unusual types of industrial action because public safety had to be paramount.

"There is a very limited amount they can do that does not affect public safety," Mr Marshall said. "You can't just withdraw your labour in firefighting." The fire brigade's chief executive, Nick Easy, said there were only a small number of clauses to the enterprise agreement that remained in dispute. He said fire brigade staff had the right to take part in industrial action "in accordance with the Fair Work Act". The strike actions will only begin once staff have taken part in a ballot process to decide if they want to proceed. The timing of the ballot has not yet been decided, although it is likely to be taken this month. A new pay deal was agreed between around 220 administrative and operational support staff and management at the MFB in January, but when sent to Finance Minister Robert Clark, it was rejected.

The state opposition's industrial relations spokeswoman, Natalie Hutchins, said Mr Clark was basing his decisions on workplace agreements on his "ideology". "[He is] either tampering with enterprise agreements that have been agreed to by the parties in the workplace or ... holding up the approval of such agreement for well over 12 months," she said, naming several agreements that had been delayed for several months before receiving final sign-off by the minister. "The Napthine government can't help [itself]," she said. "They've never seen a workplace entitlement they haven't wanted to tamper with." A spokesman for Mr Clark said the government valued the work of all fire brigade staff, and that management there was trying to negotiate "fair terms and conditions with its employees" in accordance with the state government's policies and federal laws. He said there were only two outstanding issues with the enterprise agreement, and if these were resolved a new pay deal could be signed.