A fractious history

BY ELIZABETH MOORE | STAFF WRITER

November 20, 2005

Article tools

E-mail

Share
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Facebook
- Fark
- Google
- Newsvine
- Reddit
- Yahoo

Union leader Harold Schaitberger makes no effort to conceal the place he think volunteer firefighters should hold in America today.

In tax-poor rural areas, the president of the International Association of Firefighters says, they play an "honorable role." Beyond that, he sees little use for them.

"In this new century of ours, anyplace that has any kind of population density, any kind of industry and certainly the financial resources ... is there any excuse for having people volunteering to provide such a critical public-safety service?" Schaitberger said. " ... We're not going to have volunteer police forces. We're not going to have volunteer teachers."

The 267,000-member union has sought to increase its membership in an in-your-face campaign targeting volunteers as one of its main obstacles.

Union locals have enforced a clause in the association's constitution forbidding members to also serve as volunteers, triggering legal battles from Toronto to Washington, D.C.

That clause hasn't always sat well with members in New York, where many city firefighters began as volunteers and continue to serve in their hometowns. The city's fire unions haven't taken action against any members who volunteer, but tensions have risen lately.

"We ask you not to be a volunteer firefighter in your community," Capt. Peter L. Gorman, president of the fire officers local, told members in July. "... At the very least, please leave your volunteer chiefs' cars at home."

Elsewhere, association members actively highlight what they see as the slip-ups and weaker performance of volunteers with whom they serve in combination departments.

And the union spent $1 million to pass a response-time standard in 2001 aimed in part at driving communities to replace their volunteers with paid firefighters.

The National Fire Protection Association standard, known as 1710, calls on paid and combination fire departments to have a fully staffed engine at a fire scene within six minutes. It was supported by years of studies but opposed by cities because of the hiring it would demand.

In 1992, hundreds of Long Island volunteers joined their peers in voting down a standard that included volunteer departments, arguing it was unrealistic for them. In 2001, though, the union paid to enroll 2,600 of its members in the association and bused them to the meeting to outvote the opposition.

"We first tried to raise the bar on adequate staffing and we got our -- -- kicked by a bunch of volunteers," Schaitberger told his cheering firefighters just before the vote. "... I believe we're ready to do the -- -- kicking today."

Chronic friction

This rancorous history has led to chronic friction that is hard to disguise, even in smoothly functioning combination departments, such as Montgomery County, Md.

When two Long Island volunteer chiefs stopped by the Rockville, Md., fire station one day not long ago to learn more about Montgomery's methods, Alan Hinde warned them: "You're going to get clobbered."

Hinde, then Rockville's volunteer chief, had just filed a complaint with the county citing a "hostile work environment" created by the union, whose local was detailing volunteer lapses on its Web site.

"If we're going to have any kind of collaborative working arrangement, that doesn't lead to it," said Hinde, now chief of the county's volunteer division.

Eventually, the county forced the union to stop.

There have been echoes of similar disputes in Long Beach's fire department, one of only two combination agencies here.

In 2001, the firefighters' union complained in the local weekly newspaper about what it called "a deceptive fundraising letter" from the volunteers that claimed credit for answering calls that the union said paid firefighters had handled. The union also asked other unions representing Long Beach government workers and New York City firefighters to discourage their members from volunteering. That went nowhere.