labor firegeezer on 21 May 2008 12:17 pm
Labor Turmoil In Stamford
STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT, RELIES ON FIVE VOLUNTEER fire departments for its fire protection. However, they also maintain a contingent of paid FF’s in them for consistent coverage.
One of these, the Springdale Fire Company, has been knotted with conflicts between the paid and the volunteer members during the past year. Many instances of vandalism and thefts have occurred.
Last month the volunteer organization approved the purchase and operation of a closed-circuit video surveillance system including 16 cameras both inside and outside the station.
The FF’s union has filed a grievance with the state labor board claiming that putting the cameras in the “private” areas, such as the day room, are too intrusive.
The Stamford Advocate writes:
Brendan Keatley, president of Stamford Professional Fire Fighter’s Association, said placing surveillance cameras in private areas where firefighters relax and eat meals adds to the harassment that paid firefighters have endured.
“They have been unjustly accused by people in Springdale of things they didn’t do,” he said. “It’s just been a constant pattern of employee harassment. They want us out.”
Keatley said he has no objection to cameras being placed in the garage, parking lot or work areas.
Their definition of vandalism seems to be rather broad. The only specific given to the newspaper reporter was an instance where the volume control knob on the radio console was pulled off and then replaced a few minutes later. They referred to that as “disabling the radio system.”
Read the Advocate’s full story HERE.
Springdale Fire Company WEBSITE.
on 21 May 2008 at 7:22 pm 1.Dal90 said …
“Relies” is too strong of a word.
Stamford is protected by a fully paid department that handles the old “city” area prior to the consolidation of town & city governments. The volunteer departments protect the old town area, however to varying degrees they’ve had paid guys in the volunteer stations for decades.
The paid firefighters in the volunteer stations aren’t under the paid fire department but are carried as a seperate budget line item, reporting to the volunteer chiefs, not in the promotional line for the career department, etc. There is movement towards (shock) putting all the paid firefighters in the city under the same department.
Before some of the volunteer companies relatively recently accepted paid staffing, the career department was having to play games to provide coverage — they would detail an engine for the day up to do “community education” in volunteer areas; basically go and sit in a town park so they’d be available to respond to calls the volunteers scratched on.
So you have all your stupid career - volunteer shenagigans going on, and it would be naive to think it’s all one sided on the volunteers end. As Stamford is a very wealthy city, there isn’t a budget crunch that has previously forced any group to yield.
Even in a wealthy town like Stamford, having a vibrant and active volunteer service is an asset that allows a department to achieve higher levels of service then it could otherwise. Once you break a volunteer department’s spirit, it’s very rare to see a new, effective volunteer organization develop.
In the end, most of the career - volunteer stuff comes down to insecure people on both sides who like to hide in the shadows and stir up the stew because they’re afraid of the other group for no valid reason.
As to the cameras, it certainly is not unprecedented in Connecticut to have them in volunteer stations, and I would expect such surveillance to normally include common and day rooms. One Chief I was in a Fire Officer II class with in 2005 explained to his members it wasn’t them he was worried about — but numerous other people had keys from the police officers to fire equipment vendors to the the plumbers and the Coca Cola delivery men. My station is very similiar in the diversity of key holders. We had a rash of real vandalism (air packs on apparatus that had their O rings removed, for instance) and security cameras were considered; although the departure of a particular member solved that issue along with changing of the locks and reinforcing doors to deter easily forcing them. It remains, unfortunately, something that may be necessary in the future.