Over the past year I've been following the issues between the City of Stamford, CT fire department and the so-called "Five Volunteer Fire Departments that surround the city. From my perspective, it appears to be a volunteer vs. union thing. The paid guys are looking to expand their "turf"; the volunteers are struggling to maintain some vestige of the volunteer fire service for the residents that they have been doing for the last 100 plus years.
The long and the short of it is that Stamford is going to create a new "Stamford Volunteer Fire Department". If I understand it correctly, the current volunteer fire departments, which supplement their volunteers with paid staff, will most likely lay off the career staff and force them to re-apply for their jobs. However, this time around, the current volunteer fire fighters are also enabled to apply as well, and apparently the new fire department is not going to use the civil service list as they are not required to do so. Hence the name calling and "scab" calling that is now taking place.
Its how gotten to the point where paid firefighters are accusing anyone who take any of the new jobs as being "Scabs". Hell, I'm beginning to think that most of them who post in EMTBravo.net have no clue what a scab is.
The AFL-CIO teaches its members (or is supposed to anyhow) that a "Scab" is a person who crosses a picket line and performs or supports struck work.
The last time I checked, the fire fighters of the Stamford Fire & Rescue Department(SFRD)are not on a legally sanctioned strike. In fact they are manning their apparatus in accordance with their labor contract that is in effect.
So what's with this term "scab" they throw around so lightly??? I think the main issue here is that they don't really understand what a "scab" is.
Unionized fire fighters amuse me; when its contract time, they suddenly become hard-core unionists (in their minds anyhow) and everyone in the labor circles become "brothers" or "sisters" and demand steadfast fealty to their code of Brotherhood.
Keep in mind that many of these so-called "Brothers" & "Sisters" are the same people who patronize stores like Costco, BJ's, Hanafords, Walmart (which is vehemently anti-union), Ikea; they are the same people who purchase their cars and pickup trucks from auto manufacturers who use non-union labor to make them; they buy their sneakers from Nike (who moved to Mexico and enjoy paying their employees $1.25 per hour while still charging the same for sneakers as they were when manufactured in the USA); they buy Perdue and Tyson Chicken (both anti-union); buy their underclothes from Hanes (another viciously anti-union company); they buy and eat Blue Diamond Walnuts (which is on the AFL-CIO hit list for illegally firing striking workers); etc.
The main point being that I sure don't have a lot of respect for many of the fire union members, who claim to be unionists, particularly when its contract time. Don't get me wrong; not all career fire fighters are like that; some of them practice what they preach not only at contract time but year-round. It's the fair-weather union members who put a huge blemish on the Fire Service labor movement.
I think they need to learn to be true unionists before they start to put on the facade that they are. Hipocracy has no place in the Labor Movement, especially in the fire service.
