Brennan Q&A February 2002

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TOM BRENNAN has more than 35 years of fire service experience having responded to 33,000 fire alarms. His career spans more than 20 years with the Fire Department of New York as well as four years as chief of the Waterbury (Conn.) Fire Department. He has a bachelor of science degree, summa cum laude, John Jay College; Alumnus of the Year Award, John Jay College; chairman of the Connecticut Fire Chiefs Association and a charter member of the National Fire Protection Association, Fire Service Section. He has delivered courses and seminars throughout the United States and has instructed at the National Fire Academy. He was the editor of Fire Engineering Magazine for eight years, is currently a technical editor, and his column “Random Thoughts,” is a regular monthly feature. He is co-editor of The Fire Chief’s Handbook, Fifth Edition. He is the recipient of the 1998 Fire Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award.

FEBRUARY 2002

Question: We are having a discussion with our executive board of our bargaining unit. The question that plagues us is whether it is best to have a minimum staffing list in the contract that reflects minimum personnel on duty in the municipality on each shift or minimum staffing on each unit?

Answer: Nice question brother. The answer for me is simple: write the minimum staffing for each piece of apparatus, although it helps to have both with the shift staffing in support of a firm per/unit staffing.

Why?

It is so much easier for a municipality to get the populace or a weak and uninformed fire department leader to back off the position when you ask for a reduction of on-duty firefighters to drop from 78 per shift to 72 per shift. Sometimes it even sneaks past the rank and file and actually sounds ok!

Rubbish!

You are losing six firefighters per shift! That is one firefighter for each of six pieces of apparatus. You can be sure that they don’t mean battalion chiefs or above!

If you have four firefighters and an officer on each apparatus, that should be the primary language of the contract. I am used to testifying in collective bargaining sessions, usually having to do with manning issues. Well, it is much harder to defend “city-wide” manning numbers to most of the city folks. But it sure becomes vivid when you can describe what must be done at structure fires and issue that to the arriving unit and its manning.

However, if your units arrive and all the staff of each unit are assigned only one task, then you don’t need to discuss this issue any further.

P.S. If you don’t understand that remark, write me at ‘Nuggets, TBrennan@firenuggets.com!

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