Read Glenn Usdin’s commentary at FireTruckBlog.com
Mayor Rick Gray from Lancaster, Pennsylvania says he is having the city prepare a lawsuit against IAFF Local 319 over what he says is harassment by union members against volunteer firefighters with companies that respond mutual aid into the city. Gray is also threatening disciplinary action. The mayor believes undermining mutual aid agreements impacts the safety of the citizens.
The chief of Manheim Township Fire Department says two of his volunteer, who are also career firefighters (we are told not in the City of Lancaster), have taken an indefinite leave of absence. Chief Rick Kane says he has suspended a mutual aid agreement with Lancaster because of the problem.
Plum Street fire photo by Glenn Usdin.
According to LancasterOnline.com the current and future union president say they are unaware of any harassment and point out they also did not know of any mutual aid agreements. Gray says those agreements aren’t in writing, but are verbal. Battalion Chief Ken Barton, president until the first of the year, believes the city is violating a 1997 arbitration ruling that says they can’t use volunteers unless they first call in off-duty firefighters.
Apparently what has brought this to a head is the breakdown of the city’s two ladder trucks with no replacements in sight. The truck work is now being handled by mutual aid companies.
FireTruckBlog.com’s Glenn Usdin, in looking at the dispute, the economic realities and the equipment issues brings up the point that it is important to have a “Plan B in place for emergency replacement of necessary apparatus”. Click here for Glenn’s commentary.
When fire raged in the first block of North Plum Street early Monday morning, four city firefighters were there in less than a minute.
The house was right behind the city’s fire Station 3. But after the first dozen on-duty city firefighters were at the scene, the next to arrive were firefighters from surrounding municipalities.
One woman died and two children were critically injured, but without the aid of firefighters from Lancaster Township, Lafayette and Millersville fire companies, the situation could have been worse, said city fire Chief Tim Gregg.
Without their help, the flames might have spread down the row of narrow homes, he said.
Which is why Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray was angry Tuesday at what he believes are efforts by some city firefighters to undermine mutual aid agreements between the city and surrounding municipalities.
Gray said some city firefighters have harassed volunteers who have come into the city.
Barton said he believes the city is overusing the volunteers to supplement the paid fire bureau.
“We’re being cut more and more and more, and they want to rely on somebody else come in and save our butt,” he said.
Kane said he believes the volunteers are caught in the middle of a labor dispute between the city administration and the union.
Also on STATter911 …
- Lancaster fire union official’s testimony: Volunteers are unreliable & you can’t count on them to protect your life. – March 13, 2012
- Lancaster fire union says Mayor’s report took comments about volunteers out of context. Read IAFF Local 319′s response. – March 13, 2012
- Bah! Humbug! Did DC’s mayor play Scrooge for cops & firefighters over the holidays leaving them out of the holiday bonus? Vince Gray says no. Unions say yes. – December 25, 2012
- UPDATED: Berlin, MD cuts all funds to volunteer fire company. Cites hostile work conditions including homosexual slurs against career medics. VFC says it’s a control issue. – August 21, 2012
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Notice they say “Paid Firefighters” and do not use the term “Proffesional firefighters” ? I think that is accurate. This type of childish union crap gives all of us true proffesional firefighters a bad name. I am embarrassed.
The central issue is that the two trucks are out of service and the Mayor is “Mooching” off the surrounding communities because he can. Apparently he is not having the trucks repaired or replaced.
If the MOU states he’s supposed to recall off duty personnel before requesting mutual aid, then that’s a violation of the contract.
As for the two hatter issue, that’s up a bigger problem that has to be addressed by each Union Local that has personnel responding on the volunteer equipment.
Solution; Repair, or Replace the two trucks ASAP.
uk:
a clarification,
both ladder trucks are being repaired. one is due back this week and the other the week after. that was never an issue with the city.
the contract agreement has an exception for special service units, and the city interpretation is that calling in ladder and heavy rescue units is acceptable.
in any event, the main point is the need for Plan B if something like this happens to YOUR apparatus.
Do we care about the citizens who pay our salaries or not.
This type of attitude is a horrible message being sent to the taxpayers of Lancaster. I would not expect much sympathy from them come next contract. you guys are shootin yourself in the foot.
I know of a lot of little all career departments that have total recall clauses that end up sacrificing the safety of the public and members. Take, for example, the City of Washington, Pennsylvania. Only recently have they begun to automatically request mutual aid on building fires. They have five personnel on the floor staffing two stations. If they pull up with a working fire, what’s quicker? Surrounding combination and career departments, many of whom are either staffing stations (combination) or fairly quick out the door (volly)? Or waiting for members to get the call, get into work, and then get apparatus out? Call early, call often, set up a box alarm system. You can always make your precious overtime staffing YOUR station and protecting YOUR area while the on duty shift takes in their fire.
The argument that the city should have to recall before requesting mutual aid is absurd in a situation where both ladders are out of service. They can recall the whole department if they wanted to, but it won’t get a ladder truck to the scene.
Love to see a precedent setting court decision on this for once. Go get em mayor
The forseeable future is here. The IAFF will not have the power to subvert surrounding mutual aid cos only because the economy has changed. The tax base of the US has CHANGED. I am a IAFF member of a large city and also a volunteer firefighter. I can not imagine how much my life would be worse off without the hard fought benefits and security of a union negotiated salary and schedule.
For this I am greatful. Health, safety, benefits and stability this is what a union is for, not about the numbers game, which it has become IN SOME PLACES. The problem is in these small paid depts with a lot of surrounding capabilities and in the large combination departmens, who have successfully pushed out the vollies and scorned the guys who are career and and want to volly where they live, ONLY BECAUSE THEY LOVE DOING THE DEED. When it comes to the anti-two hatting ideologues and the response practices at the behest of the unions (using call backs before close by vollies can respond, building fire houses on top of another for the last 20 years and not using automatic aid or a standardized response assignment) the end of these practices is here.
If this lawsuit goes through, it will usher out an ugly era of the union suppressing the free will of someone wanting to be a fireman for all the right reasons – the reasons of Ben Franklin.
Actually, if the lancaster fire department was funded properly, there wouldnt be a need for outside resources. The problem isnt because its volunteers coming in to help. The problem is lancaster firemen are being laid off and scabs (howard and montgomery county firemen) are riding volunteer fire trucks into lancaster. Firemen are being put in the unemployment line while these “two hatters” are taking their place because they dont catch enough fire at their own employment. If the citizens deserve better protection, maybe the politicians would fund the city fire department better instead of putting the burden on surrounding communities.. because the surrounding communities no longer have fire protection when their fire trucks are servicing lancaster city. Its not rocket science.
Commish, Well said! This issue is not with volunteers, its with the two-hatters. How can you fight for manpower in your own countys,cities, etc. And then come home to PA, and do it for free, in an area fighting for manpower??????????
Anonymous, you cant have your cake and eat it too! Nobody cares if you volunteer in a town for which you live. What their saying is, dont volunteer on your days off where a paid contingency of fireman are fighting for their very existance! These 3rd class cities in PA will take anything from any surrounding municipality, as long as its FREE. Same thing going on in Harrisburg.
Glenn,
Not the heart of the problem, but how old are Lancaster City’s two ladder trucks?
For the record, there are no career personnel from Montgomery County that volunteer at MTFR. A several of the MTFR volunteers do work for Howard, Balt Co or other jurisdictions including the city of Lancaster.
Well Commish and Northside you have your beliefs, but how about a dose of reality. The middle word in the word beLIEf is LIE. The IAFF and many others have bought into this hook, line and sinker. Commish calls brother firemen “scabs.” I’m sure he feels that way when a Lancaster FF is trapped or hurt and a scab is sitting in another close by volly house because he has a wanted poster in a Lancaster City firehouse (like Harrisburg). The IAFF is cutting off its nose despite its face. It will come back to bite us all.
Northside:
“If the Lancaster FD was funded properly…” Yep, tax the local economy so all the business and residents leave. THESE 3rd Class cities DO NOT HAVE THE MONEY. How many working fires does LC have a year? How much property is at risk? These calculations are being looked at more and more. The Harrisburg is becoming a different scenario because of the layoffs. The Mayor of Harrisburg is a Mutt. Nobody is saying layoff in Lancaster just leave the political issues for the few working fires out of the equation.
Nobody is saying layoffs in Lancanster? Here’s a dose of reality for you! They lost several postions in the last few years, two more in January, and budget to possibly eliminate 4 more next year. Now, I agree the unions should be looking at ways to save money too. They could save alot of money by going to 24/48. But that doesnt mean cut the manpower. There already understaffed. As far as the harrasment, Should NOT be tolerated! By any party.
The bottom line is this. Union firefighters should not be hurting other union firefighters. I will never understand how guys who work in DC, PG, Fairfax, Montgomery, Baltimore, etc. Places where the budgets are horrible, and where their own brothers are being laid off, furloughed or browned out or whatever, will then go home and volunteer in combination systems. Do you see the hypocracy here? Volunteers will always use the excuse that they are there for the public. Really? How about staffing your firehouses 24/7 365? How about approving ambulance billing? The volunteer system is about the little guy who never did anything else with his life having his little kingdom. Take away the million dollar apparatus, and the nine chiefs vehicles, and see how many people would still show up.
Tough financial times, call for tough measures!
When I say that, I am referring to cutting recreation budgets, putting off capital building projects, and contracting out things like Public Works….not laying off firefighters or running mutual aid into a city like Lancaster on the first alarm.
http://reason.org/news/show/122369.html
As a 23 year member of the IAFF in a small town with only 2 firefighters on a piece of apparatus and a life member of a volunteer company in my town I will state this opinion….We have no problem with volunteers in my dept, in fact we get along quite well with them and they actually ride our trucks. we have doubled our call volume in the past 20 years to over 5500 runs a year…….in that time we’ve added zero manpower.
We will not tolerate union members from other fire depts to join our town volunteers as an active member or respond with another volunteer dept if we ever intend to get more manpower. The bottom line is if you’re a IAFF member volunteer all you want in a volunteer town just don’t respond to the few calls to paid towns, don’t worry you’ll still make enough calls to get your ole tax credit. If you’re a IAFF member in a big city dept shame on you for even responding into another paid town as a volunteer , how would you like if volunteers came into your city and told the your Chief to send you home, they’ll do it for nothing. Now I know some vollys will disagree to that I will say ,How about if someone walked into your place of empolyment and told your boss they were there for free……where would you end up?
Vendetta: There are off duty montgomery firemen working part time for MTFR which is just as bad as “two hatters” running into the city that lays firemen off. They too are in violation.
Anonymous: A scab is not a “brother” of mine. I am career and have volunteer membership, however, you will not see me run into any iaff jurisdiction to get my “jollies” off. The city doesnt need vollies to come help them out of burning buildings. I am not a fan of defensive firefighting strategies, however in this time period with skeleton crews, fires should simply be fought from the exterior. So there isnt a need for volunteer support.
Maybe the manheim twp chief should worry about his jurisdiction instead of a mutual aid agreement. I dont think the township taxpayers would be happy to find out they are spending tax dollars servicing the city of lancaster.
Once validation is made, these scabs will have to hear about it at work. Sure, not all locals enforce regulations, however lavish station assignments and shift work can easily be a thing of the past.. as they find new places to earn a paycheck within their respective departments.
Commish – Did you even read the newspaper article before you came on here talking jibberish???
1) Most of the guys that Manheim Township hired are career elsewhere. If you talk to them, they each took the job for various reasons (which I have, I work with one), but most will say to supplement their diminishing incomes. The fact that they are employeed by Manheim Township means they don’t get to pick and choose the calls they run. By being an employee of the township they respond to any call for the township…kind of the whole point of having career staffing. When they took the job, there was a slight chance they may be called to the city once or twice a year. Not really a conflict of interest in my book. The fact that the city ladders are broken down is what is causing them to respond more frequently.
2) The Manheim Chief obviously did have concern for his jurisdiction and his volunteers and employees. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have suspended the mutual aid agreement with the city.
3) Just about every firefighter out there comes from a different past whether it be a plumber, electrician, carpenter or some other similar trade. I know many of these guys all work side-jobs or part-time employment to supplement their pay. Do you have an issue with these guys working other jobs that keep other union brothers out of work? Or is the fire service the only one where people can’t have side jobs.
4) I don’t know how the Lancaster City union can be taken seriously in its bitch while many of its own members volunteer in the surrouding communities. Hell, several of them volunteer at the township in question and hold officer positions like captain and assistant chief. Talk about hypocrisy.
Don’t get on the truck if going to a paid town if you’re a union guy, but then bitch that they can’t provide adequately trained personnel to the call…that’s hypocrisy. Guys, we really are on the same team. It’s truly unfortunate to see the attitudes of some of my brothers here. I hope for the best for these guys during negotiations, we all know how fun that process will be. As prior military, I see the same scenario with contract firefighters, who can also be unionized. Now, in my experience, they were taking the jobs away from the military. While we didn’t like it, they remained our brothers and worked with them, trained with them. We didn’t refer to them as scabs. Just like any other family, you’re my brothers, but that doesn’t mean you don’t disgust me. God Speed, be safe!