GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan —
Grand Rapids Firefighters Union President Joe Dubay said despite having nearly four times as many calls a year than three decades ago, their daily staff numbers have stayed the same.
A concern across the state, firefighters are hoping MI House Bill 4688 solves the issue.
Currently, if Dubay and his union want to discuss safe staffing with the municipality, the municipality can choose not to discuss it, leaving it a “permissive subject” during negotiations and bargaining.
“What we're asking the legislature to do is to make this a mandatory subject to bargaining, just to bring the conversation to the table,” he said.
According to Dubay, Michigan has one of the lowest staff ratios in the area, with around 50 career firefighters per 1,000 residents. Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, he said, have substantially higher ratios.
He said with a mandatory conversation around staffing, unions could address “safe staffing,” or how many employees they would need to respond to calls and actions.
A misconception, Dubay said, is that any staffing changes brought to the table would be automatically made.
“I could come and say, I want 100 more firefighters in Grand Rapids, which would be awesome, because it would be very safe for the citizens,” he said. “But if the money's not there, the arbitrator can't, you know, is not going to award that.”
They could not take money away from other municipal activities and functions, like garbage collection, to address their staffing needs.
“That's always the fear that, oh, they just want to do a big cash grab. They want to do a big, you know, they just want to increase their numbers,” he said. “Well, certainly we always want more firefighters, right? And more police for our communities, because it makes it a little safer for the citizens, right? But if the money's not there, can't do it.”
During his 33 years as a firefighter in the city, Dubay said they’ve gone from responding to fires, medicals, river rescues, and minor technical rescue – to now also running EMTs, technical rescue, high angle rescue, dive teams, and hazmat teams.
“So we've taken on all these with a little less staffing. Some of these are, you know, low volume, high risk. Others are, you know, high volume, high risk.”
Dubay said leadership in the city has been cooperative, but firefighters don’t want to leave the door open to the possibility of being ignored.
“We're just asking for the legislature to say, we just want you to tell them to get to the table, to talk to us so we can figure out what's best for the citizens.”
Michigan Professional Fire Fighters Union has more information on their fight for HB 4688 here.