“The challenge is quite simply recruitment of people who are willing to take the time to get the certification it takes to be a firefighter today,” said Michael Hunt, chief of the Clearwater Volunteer Fire Department in Beech Island, S.C., an Aiken County township of about 4,000 people.
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All true – including the points from your post above – but… clearly there are still a reasonable number of folks who want to be part-time volunteer fire fighters. Yes, all of the limitations you note apply. But that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t integrate some small percentage – say to reach a goal of 15%-20% of the total over a decade or two – into our current workforce. The reason this doesn’t happen is simple: the unions won’t stand for it, as it diminishes their power.
And therein lies the problem. We have budget and pension issues that could be largely solved at the margin (where everything important happens) by increasing – not substituting with – a volunteer component. The unions, however, won’t have it – they’re all or nothing. And that does not seem to me to be a reasonable position.
I’m not anti-union, per se. But, wowsers, these unions take some outrageously unreasonable positions that are real head scratchers. And the total and complete opposition to integrating any volunteers into anything is one of them. Great for the union reps, not so great for everyone else.
