The volunteers/first responders, why do we need to keep them?
Lots of union members are volunteer firefighters/first responders.
One reason why is that when the State, counties, and cities go broke, the volunteers will still be responding because they don’t do this work as their primary job. There is a commonality between volunteer firefighters and union, both under attack.
For them it’s about community and what they can do to make things safer and better for their families, neighbors, citizens, and visitors within that area. It’s about being selfless in a time when being greedy is becoming more commonplace in this country.
But the state and federal governments are making this volunteerism harder with the regulations and laws that make no exemptions for the volunteer first responders. These same laws for full-time first responders are the same for volunteers, and it is not done for safety, but to weed out the volunteer first responders.
The way it is done is to put more costs and requirements on training of the volunteers for a type of job that has worked for the 60 years that I know of.
Follow the Money: the manufacturers of all fire engines and clothing have people sitting on all the different safety boards that make the rules, like the 10 year rule on turnouts (fire safety clothes), helmets, and now the rule that says each volunteer must have two sets of turnouts at a cost of between $2,000 to $3,000 a set.
The then SCBA (breathing apparatus) keeps getting add-ons which out dates the sets at a cost of $2,000 to $3,000 a piece.
If you want to know why there are less volunteer first responders, just follow the money and rules changes and who benefits. The beneficiaries are more than you think. Consider a death of volunteers by a thousand cuts or regulations.
But the old volunteers will still show up if we let them.
And you will be damn glad to have them when you’re bleeding out or your house is on fire. This is why some of the best volunteers are working at union jobs and retired union workers who have good pensions and time on their hands to volunteer for their communities’ betterment.
In 2026 unions worldwide must educate and expand their memberships or face certain death. We need to educate our workers to understand that the republican party does not care about, does not deserve their support or votes and only cares about the billionaires. The GOP is their enemy and not their friends. The GOP and billionaires are the workers’ enemy. They want the workers’ sweat and blood for as cheap as they can get it. These greedy people and their insatiable appetite for more leaving us with much less will not stop until we’re forced to work for scraps and fighting each other for the pittance. They will not invite you to golf with them or go hunting or to dinner with them. In fact, they are always in pursuit of ways to destroy our unions and the way of life we’ve obtain by being union. One way they are doing this is to use the court system, especially the lop-sided Supreme Court, to take away our union rights and to get more states to vote for The Right to Work, which leaves work...
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