Here in NJ the firetrucks from the neighboring town are 20 blocks away instead of 20 miles, and towns insist on paying firemen very well to sleep all day in the firehouses (we don’t have many fires, and the towns are on top of each other). Many of our paid departments were set up when large companies had factories that required the departments; those companies paid a large part of the bill for the firemen.
Forty years later the factories are closed down Superfund sites, and the firemen insist they are still necessary in the same numbers. Firemen I know tell me how important a paid department is, while they live in towns that have volunteer departments; apparently my children need paid firemen to sleep safely while their children don’t. I never supported “residency laws” until this nonsense came up.
When I’ve talked to paid firefighters, you can see from their evasive responses that they know they’re not all that they’re cracking themselves up to be WRT “Why not have volunteer departments?”
Where I have lived for the last 10+ years in two locations, the departments are volunteer, and they do quite well for what they have and the amount of ground they have to cover.
It’s high time that communities start going back to volunteer fire and law enforcement groups, and if they can’t do that, then they need to crack down on unionized workforces negotiating pensions that are simply unsupportable in the long run.
Another thing that has to happen is that people need to quit buying the BS that these “public safety” types keep peddling - that they’re working oh so very hard at such a great risk to their lives and safety.
How many firefighters die on the job per year? Between 70 and a bit over 100 per year, over the last 10 years.
Now, how many farmers and ranchers are killed on the job per year?
More than 500. About 100 farm/ranch kids are killed on the farm or ranch per year.
You don’t hear of farmers or ranchers getting fat-assed pension plans, do you? Nor unionizing to demand higher food prices.
Firefighters should man up and STFU. They’re not so terribly special. Cops die in slightly higher numbers on the job per year.
Neither comes close to the rate at which loggers, fishermen, etc die per year. We don’t see loggers getting huge pension plans, either.
At some point, someone has to just lay out the facts and tell the truth. The truth is, cops and firemen aren’t all that special. Their jobs aren’t the most hazardous, they’re not all that physically demanding by comparison to logging, fishing, ranching and farming, and they can be performed by volunteers.
The USSR tried “volunteer farming” on their collectives. Didn’t work out so well.
That said, when disaster DOES strike, you couldn't pay me enough to do their job. Witness the Trade Center on 9/11. Is it worth it? Hard to say. But I think it bears a close, close re-examination. WITHOUT the unions butting in.