Union putting turf over duty

The Press reports:

Lives and property could be put at risk after a Christchurch firefighter was banned from helping his volunteer brigade, a fire chief says.

Sumner Volunteer Brigade chief fire officer Alan Kerr said he was “riled” that a young firefighter had been told he was no longer allowed to volunteer after becoming a full-time paid firefighter.

“It’s unfortunate. A situation could occur where lives or property could be put at additional risk because we are down a man,” Kerr said.

The Sumner brigade struggled to find volunteers as most residents did not work in the area during the day, he said.

Most New Zealanders regard our volunteer fire fighters as community heroes. The professional fire fighters union sees them as scabs, and the hatred goes back decades.

In their ideal world, their would be no volunteer firefighters. Every town or community in NZ, no matter how small, would have a paid unionised fire fighting service – even if they only got one call out a year.

New Zealand Professional Firefighters’ Union president, Steve Warner, said the decision was made last week to decline the firefighter’s request to remain a volunteer mainly because of conflicts with rank.

Volunteer brigades such as Sumner – which came under the Christchurch Fire Service jurisdiction – often attended the same jobs as paid city crews.

A situation could arise where a paid firefighter could hold a higher rank in their volunteer brigade, Warner said.

If paid and volunteer brigades were to both attend an incident, the firefighter in his volunteer role may take command over his official superior, he said.

Note the “could”. Also note that this bogus concern is trivial. You can simply have a rule that if paid and volunteer firefighter are both in attendance, a volunteer firefighter does not take command if they are also a paid firefighter of lower rank.

Kerr said he could understand that a rank clash, from the union perspective, was a valid problem, but that was not relevant in this case.

The firefighter was young, did not hold any position of rank, and would not have been sent to jobs outside Sumner, he said.

“If any paid firefighter is willing to put the time into their community, he should be allowed to,” Kerr said.

As I said, the concern about rank is bogus. The union is maintaining its decades long hatred of volunteer fire-fighters and does everything it can to overcome them. Their hope is that if volunteer brigades fail due to lack of volunteers, then the union can take it over as a paid station.