Firefighters on duty are an insurance policy. We all know that it is ridiculous to not carry adequate insurance on our homes and automobiles. We spend hundreds of dollars on insurance year after year after year from which we receive no benefit – until disaster strikes.
How many of us could afford to rebuild our homes if they were severely damaged or destroyed? How many of us could afford to repair or replace our automobiles if they were seriously damaged, especially while still making payments? And how many of us could afford to defend ourselves against a lawsuit brought on ourselves by a momentary lapse in judgment?
Firefighting in a city presents life-threatening challenges unlike anywhere else. Most residences are older multi-story row homes, many now cut up into multiple apartments. Few row homes were built with fire safety in mind; most lack firewalls, and often share common lofts.
The current staffing of the Lancaster City Bureau of Fire is adequate for one first-alarm response. That’s all, folks. One working fire would quickly consume all of Lancaster City’s on-duty firefighting resources. What happens when there is a second call (which does happen)?
Current plans call for off-duty firefighters to be called in. But off-duty firefighters do have a life, and they are not being paid for being on-call 24/7. Even if they were at home waiting for a call, there would be a delay until reserve apparatus could be manned and respond; in this time, a fire could easily spread into adjoining structures – or someone could die who might have been rescued had an on-duty unit been available to respond.
An alternative is to ask suburban volunteer fire companies to respond inside Lancaster City. Volunteer firefighters as a whole are true professionals, spending their own time and money to increase their skills and knowledge. But the vast majority of suburban volunteers have little or no experience with century-old multi-story row house construction; even though most would willingly risk their lives to save trapped victims, they might not be prepared to deal with all of the intricacies and nuances of preventing a row house fire from quickly taking out an entire block of homes.
And calling volunteers from home or work to a fire station well outside the city limits would result in even longer response times, further putting lives and property at risk. Besides, how would suburban taxpayers feel about their resources routinely being used in the city, limiting their own access to fire protection?
So far, Lancaster City has been extremely lucky. We have been gambling with an understaffed fire department for far too long. Just like in any kind of gambling, sooner rather than later our luck will run out. When it does, someone is going to die needlessly; it’s only a matter of time. What price is a person’s life really worth?
How will a grieving family member ever be consoled by knowing that their loved one lost their life because the cost of an adequately-staffed fire department was considered to be too expensive?
Volunteer response would work just fine. The problem isn’t any of the things listed in this letter, the problem is that the city firefighters refuse to allow suburban volunteer into the city by contract, except in the most extreme circumstance.
And when the volunteers do come in, all the firefighters receive a special pay. That’s the absurdity that the city is faced with in dealing with this labor union.
The city could also start its own volunteer company to support to paid firefighters, supply a feeder system to the paid department, and engage community involvement. But those steps are going to require the union to get its head out of its checkbook.
Yes, insurance is great….sometimes. Life, health, accident, auto, home….often very wise purchase decisions.
Comparing the Lancaster City firefighter’s union demand to an insurance policy reminds me of the overly expensive and unfairly priced insurance they try to jam down your throat at the electronics store.
Kudos to the Mayor and the Chief for standing up to the bully union and protecting the real interests of the citizens and taxpayers of Lancaster City. It’s time to stop the rape of the taxpayer by the public unions.
The bully union. What a joke.
That “bully” union that you deride has offered hundreds of thousands of dollars in contract concessions to maintain their already understaffed situation, yet the mayor and fire manager have done nothing but reject reject reject, even when the union offered more than the city wanted.
For years people have tried to claim that a volunteer presence in the city would make everything better. Guess what… we already have a volunteer presence in the city, and because the mayor and fire chief decided to take advantage of the volunteer’s help, Manheim Township refuses to assist on city fires.
Here’s the thing, asking the volunteers to help out every once in a while is fine. No one in the firefighter’s union has ever opposed occasional assistance from them. The bowtied buffoon and his lacky Gregg want volunteers in on every fire call. They want the city to essentially merge services with volunteer fire departments, especially Lafayette and Lancaster Township.
However they want to do so FOR FREE. They offer nothing in return for the help of volunteers. And before you go off on the tangent of “mutual aid” understand that it would take the city sending every on duty firefighter to equal the strength offered the city by the volunteer departments on one rig. There is no equity there.
As a resident of Manheim Township, I’m now paying a tax to provide adequate fire protection in my community. I’ll be damned if my tax dollars are going to be spent supplementing a city “led” by a mayor and a yes man fire manager who refuse to provide adequate fire protection for their own citizens.
You can spit at the union all you want. It’s pretty clear that your position is based on political ideology and not an understanding of the issues involved. Hell, even the Management Partners report says that what Gray and Timbo are doing is wrong.
What are the firefighters demands? I saw an article in the paper where they said would accept a no pay increase for 2012.
Lancaster City has over 59,000 residents in 7.4 square miles. As I write this, the Lancaster City Bureau of Fire has only two engines and one ladder truck on duty, staffed with nine firefighters. That’s not even enough to properly deal with a one-alarm working fire.
By the time suburban volunteers would man their equipment and arrive at the scene of a second fire in the city, it would have easily extended into adjacent structures, and people who might have been rescued by on-duty city firefighters could already be dead.
Gambling with our lives in the name of saving money is unacceptable under any conditions.
Demands? I think using that term shows how polarized this issue has become – and by this issue I don’t just mean city firefighters’ negotiations, I mean the whole union vs. the world foolishness.
The city firefighters have expressed in very plain terms their desire to maintain some modicum of safety and basic response capabilities for the city fire department. Unfortunately, Rick Gray and Tim Gregg are only focused on the financial bottom line. They absolutely refuse to acknowledge the fact that operating a full time fire department costs money.
Here’s the answer to your question:
Firefighters want enough people to do the job properly. That includes enough staffing to have firefighters immediately available to do each job required at the fire scene, including standby firefighters who can intervene in the event that an operating firefighter is injured or requires assistance inside an involved structure. The recent layoffs and pressure placed on firefighters to retire has reduced the fire department’s on duty staffing by 20%.
Firefighters want adequate equipment to do their job properly. As I’ve previously expressed, Gregg’s recent decision to shut down Truck 1 on East King Street not only lengthens response times to fires east of Queen Street, it eliminates the only ladder truck that can actually travel down the narrow streets of Lancaster. Neither Rick Gray or Tim Gregg offered any legitimate reasoning for the decision to eliminate Truck 1, stating that it would “consolidate manpower.” However, the shutdown of Truck 1 only shuffles deckchairs on the Titanic in terms of staffing, leaving 11 firefighters on duty either way. Please note that the elimination of Truck 1 stands in direct contravention to the findings of the Management Partners report obtained by Gray in 2006 and paraded by Gray as the blueprint for repairing Lancaster’s financial woes. More on that below.
Firefighters want paid for the hours they work. Rick Gray’s Management Partner’s report calls for the firefighters to change their work schedule to a 72 hour per week schedule made up of 24 hour shifts. This schedule change has been discussed ad nauseam since it was first proposed in 2009. What Gray and Gregg never mentioned, and what firefighters object to about the city’s plan, is that it would force firefighters to work a minimum of 300 hours, the equivalent of about 13% more time without compensation. In other words the city wants firefighters to work an additional month for free. I know of no enterprise, commercial, non-profit or governmental that would attempt to its workforce into compulsory work with no compensation. Ignoring the obvious ethical questions raised by the city’s plan, there are legal implications that the city has refused to acknowledge. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act mandates that overtime be paid to any non-exempt worker who works over 40 hours per week. The city’s plan completely ignores this federal law and does not take into account that more than a third of the hours worked by firefighters under the 24/48 plan would be considered overtime.
Firefighters want a work environment that is free of harassment and intimidation from vindictive and acrimonious managers. In the past year alone one senior field supervisor has retired, another has resigned and a junior firefighter has resigned. All three cited harassment, intimidation and retribution for union actions as reasons for leaving the department. Tim Gregg has fostered an unprofessional, divisive work environment that is forcing talented and capable staff from the ranks of the city’s fire department, all a loss for the city. None of these personnel have been replaced.
The issues are really very simple to understand. Gray and Gregg have repeatedly attempted to frame the discussion in terms of “greed” on the part of the firefighters when the issue is based on nothing of the sort. This is a debate about safe working conditions and equitable pay. Firefighters aren’t seeking anything more than what they need to do the job, and what every worker deserves for fair pay.
It really is that simple.