[Summit] firefighter's perspective of new schedule changes

[ASH]

>From a Providence firefighter, and your neighbor, being personally affected
by the shift changes proposed by Brett Smiley and Mayor Elorza:

Imagine if Walmart decided to save money by increasing the regular work
week of their workers to 56 hours, therefore eliminating the need to pay
them overtime after 40 hours a week. That would not only be illegal, it
would be obvious exploitation of their workers and extremely immoral. We
would all be boycotting Walmart and appalled at their inhumanity as this
scheme would be grossly prioritizing money over workers rights.

Why is it acceptable then to treat firefighter's like this? Why are
firefighters not seen as hard workers deserving of respect and fairness?
Why are our rights as workers being ignored?

Brett Smiley and Mayor Elorza made us all believe they were good
compassionate people but they are forcing 400 city workers into a 56 hour
work week.

Brett Smiley and Mayor Elorza are trying to make a very unfair and sudden
change to the firefighter's schedule sound like a reasonable thing to do.
But the changes are not fair or reasonable and will negatively impact
firefighter's quality of life.

It just doesn't make sense and it pains me to hear that Brett Smiley and
Mayor Elorza are making people believe this is a great idea that will save
the city money. Of course it will save money, but is it the right thing to
do? Is our quality of life is insignificant?

The new shifts would not be "slightly longer". Slightly longer would be
adding a few hours to the work schedule. The changes being proposed
actually add two days to our work week, increasing our work week from 42
hours a week to 56 hours a week. That is not a "slight" change.

A mandatory increase to a 56 hour week is a case of thinking more about
money than the people doing the job and how such an increase affects them.

The plan does indeed get rid of overtime because it increases the regular
work week by two days, so yes, obviously there will be a lot of
firefighters working and it will eliminate overtime. But overtime will only
be eliminated by making everyone work a lot more hours at regular pay.

Overtime comes up about four times a month on average, which means working
an extra four days a month, if you wish. Overtime is voluntary therefore,
you can choose not to work overtime and a lot of firefighters choose not to
because they value their recovery/time off.

56 hours a week is a very long work week by anyone standards. It is a very
drastic change to our work schedule. A firefighter's job is very physically
demanding including sleeplessness, hard physical work and smoke exposure,
therefore recovery time is key.

I have heard some hurtful and cynical comments saying that why do I care
about working 56 hours when we sleep at work anyway. On overnight shifts,
we are allowed to sleep between calls but that doesn't mean we are not at
work and in service. We don't sleep and ignore calls for help. And I would
rather be at home with my family, after a 42 hour work week, than made to
stay at work for an extra 14 ours.

A lot of firefighters will most likely leave the job when these changes
take place as a big plus to the job is the current schedule. These changes
will cause a large exodus to other fire departments or other lines of work
that don't have such an unusually long work week. Why work a job that
requires you to work 56 hours a week when most jobs out there are on
average 40 hours a week and are not so dangerous?

With the decreased workforce, overtime will once again be an issue because
there will not be enough people to fill the required spots. In that case,
overtime will have to change from voluntary overtime to forced overtime,
which will take our workweek to 65+ hours a week. Would you want your
firefighters to be so sleep deprived when answering a call to a burning
house or medical emergency?

As I hope you can understand by now, this issue is not about money for us,
it is about a huge increase in our work week and a big loss to our time
off. I think people focus on our pay and on money and they forget the fact
that we have families and like to spend time with them, just like everybody
else.

Saving money at the expense of our quality of life is not a "slight" change
to me. As much as the changes will temporarily get rid of overtime and save
money that way, the true cost of their money saving scheme will be our
quality of life.

Many studies have been done about the ideal work week and its impact on
happiness, increasing the workweek to almost 60 hours a week is definitely
not going to increase our work satisfaction or work/life balance.

We already risk our lives when we are on the job, now we have to risk our
family life as well?  This is unfair any way you look at it. We are part of
a money saving scheme and our quality of life does not matter. It really
makes us feel extremely undervalued.

There is an inherent disrespect in these changes and I would appreciate my
neighbors getting passionate about this issue on our behalf and helping us
spread the word that saving money at the expense of the quality of life and
work satisfaction of 400 city workers and their families is not a good
proposal.

A better proposal would be hiring more firefighters to fill the empty spots
and thus, eliminate overtime.

Making the workers of an already short staffed department work longer hours
is not a solution that takes into account the negative impact this will
have for us and our families. We will in effect still be working overtime
hours, but instead of the fair compensation in other industries of time and
a half for any work over 40 hours a week, we will have an increase of $50 a
week for all the extra hours combined.



Thank you for your time and I hope you talk about this with others now that
you have the facts from every angle.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sna.providence.ri.us/pipermail/summit_sna.providence.ri.us/attachments/20150613/a4642471/attachment.htm>