"It's All I Got"

It may be just me, but a lot of today’s union firefighters are thinking differently than they did in the old days about unions? Having spent 44 plus years in the industry, I can say without a doubt firefighters are heroes, brave, gutsy, tough, strong, a little nuts, but they pour their heart and soul into the job of saving others and their pets. So why don’t they do the same for themselves? In 44 years as a volunteer and district firefighter, the four words that still haunt me to this day are, “It’s all I got.” I’ve lost count of the times people begged us to protect their home because, “It’s all I got.” I was on a strike team and we were getting ready to start setting up on houses before the fire hit upon us and an old man came up to us and our fire engine and asked if we would protect his home. He said it wasn’t much, but “it’s all I got.” It wasn’t much, more of a ramshackle old place in the woods. The strike-team leader didn’t want us to spend time on the old place, but I promised I would not spend too much time on it, but just wanted to fulfill my promise and give the place a chance so he allowed me to stay. We kept his little home safe. It turned out that the old place had a good water supply and the man had been feeding the deer old bread for years. So that day, we protected an hold house, a few cats and a herd of deer, and the old guy still has it all. On the Bear Fire, we were mopping up and there was a family standing by what was left of their house—the foundation. It was heart wrenching to see. I saw something move by their propane tank. It was a cat. I picked it up and asked the family if it was theirs, the sheer joy and the flow of tears at finding their cat had survived and that the devastating fire hadn’t destroyed everything of theirs was exhilarating. It still chokes me up just thinking about how grateful that family was to have their kitty despite losing everything. I gave it my all in protecting what belonged to others and saving the lives of so many while at the same time protecting myself and providing for my future. The life of a firefighter can be uneventful one minute and life threatening in the next where we don’t even consider our own safety when trying to save another. So, why don’t many firefighters consider their own survival and futures? Why are so many firefighters today against unions? Do they feel unworthy of such protection? Unions provide job protection, work place safety, employment, healthcare and pensions. Depending on how involved you want to be, unions can even satisfy many people’s social needs, as described in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, by becoming active in the union meetings, picnics and fight to protect we what we have against these who would take it from us in the interests of corporations over workers. The more involved in the union councils, the more friends you make and the stronger unions become the unions can provide for workers.