How about- 100% necessary 100% of the time that they are running a call that is truly an emergency- final offer
How can you expect me to buy into it’s such a responsibility, and at the same time, we would have trouble getting guys to show up for work and on time if we didn’t have such long shifts.
Why not just say we like the ot, we like working 10 days a month, we don’t want short shifts cause a call at the end of it would mess up my plans.
Yes it does cost less to pay ot instead of new full time hires.
Why, is because of pension benefits.
given after 9/11
which we can’t pay for.
Solution, part time new hires with greatly reduced benefits and shorter shifts for all.
I’m talking about firemen not law enforcement.
There is no shortage of applicants and a great history of unpaid volunteers.[/quote]
Fine, 100% of the time when they are running a call — which happens more often than you seem to think. What do you expect them to do in between? Go home and play checkers, then wait for the call…so they can arrive an hour later? Do realize that when you see them at the grocery store, that they are still on-call. They have NO time off during the entirety of their 24-hour shift. If a call comes when they are checking out at the grocery store (which they might do only once per day), then they have to leave the line and run the call. That’s why the fire engines are in the parking lot. Gotta go to the bathroom? Too bad. When the tones go off, you’re out the door. Same with sleeping, showering, or eating. Nothing else comes before the call. Desk jockeys get to have coffee breaks, lunch breaks, and can go to the bathroom when they need to. Not so with safety personnel.
Having shorter shifts would not reduce overtime. If someone is absent, another person has to replace him/her. It doesn’t matter if it’s an 8-hour shift or a 24-hour shift. Also realize that a 24-hour public safety employee works 53 hours per week BEFORE earning any overtime. If they moved to 8-hour shifts, this would change.
The additional expenses are for overhead/administrative costs and training, as well as benefit costs. Firefighters train a **minimum** of two hours per day. There is no way to effectively train all the firefighters if they are on three 8-hour shifts — and then you want to add part-timers to the list? You would need to triple (or more) the administrative staff in charge of training — which is much more intensive than you might think. Think new equipment (medical, fire, extrication, etc.), new medical procedures, firefighting tactics, hazardous materials, terrorism, biohazards and contagious diseases, personnel issues, report writing, etc. You clearly don’t understand the complexity and dynamic nature of the job. There is much more to it than you know.
Also, the transitions from one shift to another take a lot of time because they have checklists of things which need to be done every shift — yes, maintaining equipment, writing reports, passing along information regarding calls, equipment, and scheduling issues, in addition to project work they have to do. There are simply not enough hours in an 8-hour shift to do everything they need to do. Also when you have so many shift changes in a day, what do you do when you’re on a call that overlaps the shift change? At least with one shift change a day, you only have to deal with those headaches once per day. Three times per day?
FYI, they went to 24-hour shifts as a cost-saving measure.
