Volunteer Fire Fighters

DianeZ

Good morning everyone!
I have a quick question regarding employees who are volunteer fire fighters. Does anyone have a policy regarding this that they would share with me? I'm assuming unpaid. What about attendance issues? What do you do if employees get "beeped" during work hours? Just looking for info as to what other companies do. In this case the employees is an exempt employee. But, the next one may not be! Thanks for your help!
Diane

Balloonman1

I just hired one. They are required to have 2 days a month that they are at the station so it is manned. They get the schedule at the end of each month. So in this case they do not get called during the day. I can live with 2 days a month.
My $0.02 worth,
DJ The Balloonman

HRCalico

Our volunteer fire fighter is currently hourly, although I'm looking at pushing for exempt due to a change in duties. Right now, he punches out for calls (which happen at all times of the day), and if he is late either in the morning or after lunch due to a call, we excuse it. We don't have a written policy specifically for this, though.

I believe some employers in our area pay fire fighters for time on calls; as it is, ours gets all his hours in easily in a week even with the calls. In a town of 3,000, we really really appreciate their civil service!

zen

Our ee's rotating shift schedule is posted a year in advance and has a lot of built-in time off. Our volunteer ff can easily schedule their on call and training time. If they are working a fire and are tardy due to their volunteer work, we do not discipline them.

Don D

Our state is not one that has a law requiring an employer to let volunteers report to fires. Some states do, like jury duty. I'm afraid that in our manufacturing environment, we would not be able to allow employees to absent themselves from production with no notice. It just can't be done. Although my response won't help with your policy, I just wanted to offer the flip side.

coloradospecialdistricts

Don brings up a good point--you need to check your state laws regarding volunteer firefighters before you draft anything. Here in Colorado it is illegal to discipline or terminate an employee for responding to an emergency fire call, but it is not mandatory that time off be paid by the employer--don't know about in your state. I have never seen a personnel policy written to address this particular issue, but I suppose you could use your military leave policy as a base...