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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?
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?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Gregory Borg on
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You have priorities, stick by them.
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Permalink Reply by Fabulous Heather Days of Summer on
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good point
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Permalink Reply by John Crabbe on
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Majority of the volunteer depts I know are also POC. The true volunteer depts are few and far between, but even $5 per drill, call, etc is still something. Those depts mandating a response crew also have sign up sheets for days and unfilled spots are assigned with inverse seniority, but they are also compensated for their time....not much, but it is compensation. The one true volunteer dept I know of has no issues with getting personnel to respond because of how they are established and what the community does to support them.
if mandating has worked in the past, and is part of the history of the dept.. then it's something the newcomers have to decide. If they want to be firefighters
True, but newcomers is one small part of the issue at hand. When a volunteer endeavor becomes more of a job requirement, it will be a challenge to maintain those existing personnel as well. Just look at how training mandates just to volunteer has turned off many perspective volunteers and just maintaining training is a challenge for existing personnel. Now when you start mandating response coverage without compensation, you no longer have volunteers, these are now employees.
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So how do we fix the problem?
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So how do we fix the problem?
Simple, compensation.
What I have seen with several depts that do this is to compensate for the time to be on call. This can be something like $1/hr or whatever wage decided. The time is accrued for a quarter and at the end of that quarter they receive a check. This check can be a couple hundred dollars by the time the quarter rolls around.
where I volunteer (POC really) we received $5 for all drills we made, $7.50 for a fire call with $5/hr into the incident. We could also do EMS and sign up for duty. If signed up, you received $1/hr to be available. At the end of the quarter one could pull in several hundred dollars and there have been times I made over a thousand....not too bad for being available. It kept motivation and was an incentive to sign up.
While the money does add up, it is still cheaper than losing members or struggle to recruit members with unnecessary mandates and you still maintain responses for calls. The cost involved is also much cheaper than hiring personnel.
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How much $ does your department pay in compensation each year? How many members are in your department?
How does one go about getting their department - and those that fund it - to shift their practice without having the department melt down into drama?
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and now i want a decade of compensation...
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Some staff are offended when compensation is discussed as they feel that they choose to volunteer and that compensation diminishes their many years of pure volunteer work.
Some also say that they do not want to feel like they are owned by having compensation, since then it becomes like their work job which creates obligation drama.
Just some thoughts. Cause you have good ideas - so I wanted you to speak to these too.
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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on
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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?
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How much $ does your department pay in compensation each year?
Hard to say, I'm no longer on that dept. The reason I made a lot on a quarterly check was because I was a live in intern and would respond pretty much anytime I wasn't on duty. Since I lived at the station I could take EMS shifts when others didn't sign up. However, at $1/hr for EMS that is up to $72/day (not always though). The village also billed for EMS calls.
How many members are in your department?
The peak was around 30-35, but it fluctuates. The village was in close proximity to one of the UW colleges and would get many students who volunteered. Of that only a handful were regularly involved. The dept also utilized live in interns for the Fire Science program to help offset staffing/response issues. You always had at least, 2 people able to respond at night and MA was used as well.
How does one go about getting their department - and those that fund it - to shift their practice without having the department melt down into drama?
I don't know.
Showing the reasons for compensation and the downfalls of making mandates for people to respond would be a first step. This would be something to bring up at a dept's business meeting to gauge if there is interest in the first place. From there it can be looked at what would be considered a fair compensation. When approaching the governing body, like anything, strength in numbers helps.
and now i want a decade of compensation
Good luck on making something like that retroactive.
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Permalink Reply by Michael D Painter on
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The problem is not going to be fixed by doing it the way it was done in the past The days of T-shirts and blue jeans for turnouts is past.
Anyone who suggest compensation MUST become aware of what the IRS is trying to do and the press release at H.R.5537 press release explains it.
Even if it passes the IRS might come back with the "waiting to be paid" verses "Paid to be waiting" question that came close to shutting down an ambulance service in Chico, Ca in the 70's.
I'd suggest you stop responding here and start writing your state and federal representatives. Snail mail is far more attention getting than email.
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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.
I personally am not getting into it with the IRS. Just discussing to learn at this point. I am not going to change this world this week on this matter, since I am changing the world on too many other things this week... but there is always next week - so thanks for the info.
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