Amalgamation

[gomesjustin]

Maybe we’re understaffed on ambulance and overstaffed on fire.

In any case, staffing levels should be determined by the owners, in this case the municipal governments, not by the employees’ unions. If our democratically-elected governments decide to reduce staffing in any department, then the employees there should not be able to veto that change any more than private-sector employees should be able to do so. They should expect fair treatment in a staffing-reduction situation (and indeed in any situation) but a veto is an unearned privilege.

In the public sector I would go further and suggest that the same should apply to wages. If the government tries to reduce wages too far, they’ll have trouble getting people to apply. Instead, my understanding is that whenever a firefighter job opens up it is swamped with qualified applications. Since there is no “keeping the business in business” motivation putting an upper limit on employee wage claims, and since firefighters have good PR, the wages go up and up. If a municipality wants to see if qualified people will work for them for less than neighbouring jurisdictions, why shouldn’t they be allowed to try?

We are understaffed on Ambulance but the cities are unable to reduce fire staffing levels at all.

I think part of it is the unions, part of it is I think at least some mandated service level but I am not sure if it is at the city level or province.

Either way no one wants to deal with the fire unions, the cities roll over on their demands or it goes to arbitration and they get what they want anyways and the province doesn't want the bad press on changing the arbitration process, especially since it is something the cities pay for , not them so no reason to wade into that fight.

Some fire departments have 24 hour shifts. You literally get paid while sleeping, eating and shitting. Work 7 days straight and have the next 3 weeks off.

"Some fire departments have 24 hour shifts. You literally get paid while sleeping, eating and shitting. Work 7 days straight and have the next 3 weeks off."

They put their lives on the line. So I think thats pretty reasonable.