Do You Believe It's Ethical to Mandate Volunteer Work?

I've been thinking about this for awhile. I LOVE the volunteer service, as I love serving my community and helping people in need.

My department is a combination department in a couple of different ways. We have EMS integrated into our department (EMS calls are about 90% of our calls epr year), and we have paid EMS First Responders, however all of the firefighters are volunteer.

At night there is obviously a hinderance of turn-out (this mostly pertains to EMS calls), so my department has mandated that certain members MUST respond overnight from 2200-0500 for any EMS call that comes out. We call these "Squad Nights". Please accept my apology if this is common knowledge already.

Generally a person assigned to these nights have been in the department under 5 years. There are three slots per night, every night, and they are all filled (Driver, EMT, Aids Person).

I can understand mandating a certain amount of calls per year, and a certain amount of trainings, but mandating a certain time-frame in which certain members MUST respond?

Take into account a lot of people work the normal hours of about 9am-5pm, so it's understandable as to why people don't respond. And don't get me wrong, I've done a lot for overnights. When I wasn't working full-time and worked part-time at night I would do many, many overnight calls.

There's an obvious hierarchy of responsiblities:
1.) Family and Friends
2.) Work
3.) Volunteering

My question to you, the Firehouse community, is: Do you believe it's ethical to mandate VOLUNTEER work?

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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on August 22, 2010 at 3:50pm

Not having come across the compensation system that John talks about, doesn't that create a bigger dilemma ethically when we have to pay members to volunteer?

Almost an oxymoron isn't it?

Lutan,
The issue isn't about volunteer because as I did mention majority of so called volunteer depts are actually really a paid on call dept. If a responder is getting compensation for calls/training, they are a POC member. The volunteer portion of the dept comes into play because the member can pick and choose what calls they want to respond on, or if they can respond.

Whereas, when a dept starts to mandate responses, you really are no longer a volunteer, you are in fact an employee. You no longer have the option of choosing which calls to respond to and much like a career FF, have to respond regardless. Mandating personnel respond without some form of compensation for time is wrong.

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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on August 22, 2010 at 3:54pm

I am sure a lot of smaller departments will end up shut down if they have to compensate for volunteers time. When departments run with a total yearly budget of $60-150K, there is not a lot of room for $40-80K of compensation

Not all depts are mandating volunteers sign up for responses either. There are still true volunteer depts that don't have to have sign up sheets. There is also a difference in asking for people to sign up and making a mandate. When a mandate is made, then you are no longer being asked, and you are now an employee, not a volunteer.

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Permalink Reply by CHRIS PUYLARA on August 23, 2010 at 4:34pm

I have read most of the responses here...and I think that we should all pay attention to the IRS thing.....and if you are vollie chief...should look into it.....bottom line is...if they want and need (and they do..) the tax revenue they are going to get it