Beds, beds, beds!

[messy]

Chris, It's a fair point.

But consider a 2 pump station between midnight and 0600, with 10 riders = 60 work hours per night.

There's simply not enough work to use 60hrs of time every night.

Training for instance, could only be indoors (not in the yard). Testing can be noisy and in fact in some urban stations, even a wakeful watch may cause noise problems for adjacent domestic neighbours.

Long stand-down periods, whilst unacceptable to the new 21st century FRS management, might be the only option. However, whether that will include beds - I doubt it

[Rich]

Yes the above could all be done during the night but I would like to make the following comments:

Training:  A lot of fire stations are in built up residential areas (where they need to be!)  Would you be happy as a local resident if you could hear ladders being chucked up and LPP's screaming at 3am.

Training again: What sort of concentration levels would you get from ff's at 3 in the morning during a lecture.  
 
Maintenance of Equipment:  A lot of our equipment is noisy so again you have noise issues when testing.

Sorry for the duplication, been on a shout and submitted without looking!!

[dave bev]

does this offer any information?


ECJ rules that on-call working is working time

In September 2003, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that time spent by a doctor working in a hospital on an on-call basis constitutes working time in its entirety, even if the employer provides a place of rest for the employee to use when not actively engaged in their duties.
On 9 September 2003, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued an important ruling on on-call working. The case (case C-151/02, Landeshauptstadt Kiel v Norbert Jaeger) concerned Norbert Jaeger, who worked as a doctor in a hospital in Kiel, Germany. He regularly performed on-call duties that required him to be present in the hospital and to work when required. This was offset in part by the granting of free time and in part by the payment of supplementary remuneration. He had a room with a bed in the hospital where he could sleep when his services were not required. Current German law distinguishes between `readiness for work´(Arbeitsbereitschaft), `on-call service´(Bereitschaftsdienst) and `stand-by´(Rufbereitschaft), and only readiness for work is deemed to constitute working time in its entirety. On-call service and stand-by are categorised as rest time, apart from the periods during which work is actually performed.
Mr Jaeger believed that all the on-call duty performed by him should be deemed in its entirety to constitute working time and took a case to a regional labour court, which was subsequently referred to the ECJ.
The ECJ Advocate-General, Ruiz-Jarabo, gave his opinion on this case on 8 April 2003, stating that on-call working should be considered in its entirety to be working time, even where the doctor in question is permitted to rest and sleep during periods of inactivity (EU0305204F).
The ECJ is not bound to follow the Advocate-General’s opinion, but often does and has done so in this case. In its ruling, it stated that the decisive factor in considering whether the characteristic features of the concept of working time within the meaning of the 1993 EU Directive (93/104/EC) on certain aspects of the organisation of working time are present in the case of the time spent on call by doctors in the hospital, is that they are required to be present at the place determined by the employer and to be available to the employer in order to be able to provide their services immediately in case of need. These obligations make it impossible for the doctors concerned to choose the place where they stay during waiting periods and therefore must be regarded as coming within the ambit of their duties. This interpretation is not altered by the fact that the employer makes a bed available to the doctors for use during down times.
The Court added that a doctor required to be on-call at a place determined by the employer is subject to greater constraints than a doctor on stand-by and not required to be on the hospital premises. Under these conditions, a doctor required to be available at the place determined by the employer cannot be regarded as being at rest during the periods of on-call duty when he or she is not actually carrying out any professional activity.

[Chris Houston]

Yes the above could all be done during the night but I would like to make the following comments:

Training:  A lot of fire stations are in built up residential areas (where they need to be!)  Would you be happy as a local resident if you could hear ladders being chucked up and LPP's screaming at 3am.

Training again: What sort of concentration levels would you get from ff's at 3 in the morning during a lecture.  
 
Maintenance of Equipment:  A lot of our equipment is noisy so again you have noise issues when testing.

Sorry for the duplication, been on a shout and submitted without looking!!

The noise thing would be an issue, but is that the real reason? If that was the only issue sound proof buildings could be used.  It seems like a poor excuse to instead do absolutely nothing if that is the sole barrier.

With regards to your implication that fire fighters are unable to be trained at 3am, how can we have confidence that they are not too tired to do it for real?

My guess is that fire fighters like to sleep at night time (I don't blame them, I do too) and to make such a magor change without motivation from them to do so, in an heavily unionised work force, would be impossible?

[Edward]

well... my opinion is... if you keep them up at night they'll just be too tired mentally to operate properly. i believe they should get their rest and respond if called out.

if they remain awake at night without anythin to do they'll get sleepy anyway. everywhere quiet and no sound nothin, it'll get to you no matter what. its been tried in malta and it failed. you get firemen "awake", physically fresh but mentally they start doing stupid mistakes

[Nathan]

What would the bosses say if you were to get some reclining type chairs s othat when there was a quiete period you could sleep or rest or do whatever.

[Rich]

I am not a dinosaur, I am not opposed to change (for the better), I have 12 years service in and hopefully 23 more years left.  I love my job, it is without doubt the best job in the world.  My current shift system is great (224) which gives me quality time with my family on my rota days.  My station is fairly busy (approx 3000 shouts p.a) so when on nights we rarely get a night in bed - but the few hours we do manage to get is generally enough so that I don't have to go to bed when I get home.

I do not see the point of change for changes sake.  Do we not work effeciently already? Why do you want us awake all night?   All people should be worried about is that if they need us we will be there irrespective if we have just got out of a bed, a hrp, or a reclining chair.

It is unrealistic to say you could sound proof buildings, the cost would be massive and you don't generally do hose drills and pitch ladders inside.

I did not imply that ff's are unable to be trained at 3am just that the retention of the information would not be as high as if given during the day.  As for confidence levels, sitting through a lecture is not the same as working operationally at an incident, I have never met a tired ff at a good working house fire!

As for comfy chairs, what is the point of taking away a bed and spending money replacing it with a chair when the end result is the same.

If our training requirements are met, our standard tests done and anything else that is required to do is completed (on nights) why is it 'offensive' to people that we go to bed?

[messy]

I don't think you can use the "we'll be too tired at 03:00" argument, as millions of employees work 24/7 , which includes at 03:00.

I too disagree that no useful work can be done in the small hours (say after midnight). bosses will instead find menial tasks to keep the crews busy, which is not the way to run any organisation

The other arguments listed in posts above are entirely valid, but let's be careful when using the 'tired' excuse, as opponants (ie employers) will focus on that flimsy point to take attention away from the better reasons to oppose such  changes

[Kaiser]

I've gone through the replies on this forum and don't have a great interest in everyone's arguments about the why's and wherefores of not having beds.  What I will say is this, on the last night that we had beds on station I told my shift that they were not to get out of bed unless their bladder was about to explode or we were mobilised to a fire call.

In the morning I got up at the crack of dawn, washed the pump, cleaned the engine bay, did all the office work and made my shift breakfast in bed and a mug of tea.  I personally didin't agree with getting rid of the beds but at least I know that my watch will know that their gaffer appreciated them and made an effort to make their last night shift with beds a comfortable one.

[Midland Retty]

The beds debate is a hard one.

The brigade is often compared with the other emergency services.

Unfortunately the Ambulance Service are run absolutely ragged as are the Police.

The brigade is the least busiest service.

So we tend to find firefighters have more period of rest between calls that their other seervice colleagues.

During the day these periods are filled by training and of course routine tests and maintenance.

During the night it would be very hard to do this. I accept there are certain tasks that could be done i.e. lectures maintenance of paper based records / progression folders etc but they wouldn't necessarily take all night as such.

There are arguments for and against having beds.

There is the very valid "rest " issue. Often firefighters are called to undertake very physical tasks. I appreciate there is an element of physical work in all of the emregncy services but as a generalisation its the firefighetrs who's job is more physical.

Thats not trying to say that to win points or anything like that Im purely trying to state fact.

id like for all emergency service personnel to be able to get some kip if they need it. Unfortunately the police and ambulance personnel are just far too busy. As are our nurses.

So what to do what to do?

Sigh wish I knew. I think i'd simply say if all tasks that can be done in the earlky hours have been completed and there's nothing else to do let the firefighters get some kip - it will mean they are fresh and rested for the next call.

[AM]

It was bound to happen:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/6707509.stm

[kurnal]

I guess they may all have fallen off the nasty dangerous chairs and knocked themselves out on the floor MLud?
Poor lambs.

[Pip]

pathetic really.It is worrying that the industrial relations appear to be so poor,that the management resort to this vindictive campaign.

[Cut Fire Service Pay]

I think this just sums up the reason why I left LAFB! How stupid is that. Replacing beds with these daft chairs cost thousands, now these Ffs are to be discaplined? How much more money has to go down the pan in the name of 'Modernisation'?

Years ago we would have laughed things like this off but now its routine. As for doing a 'spot check', well its a classic case of bullying by management. My old station spend most of the day posting leaflets through doors and putting up smoke alarms (not a bad thing when we started it). They were told the other day that this now takes priority over training and soon, operational incidents. (the retained section will take all one pump shouts at more cost)

Now I know you will get the anti-wholetime posters having a field day on this but lets face facts, this Governmnet has destroyed our fire service by letting brigades implement the farce and money saving scam that is IRMP. It won't be long before we go back to the days of Insurance companies funding the fire service.

Mind you this is the same brigade that has told Ffs to proceed to incidents without using blue lights.  

Bring back the beds and the shift system that has worked so well for years, scrap IRMP & IPDS let Ffs feel valued again.

[Kaiser]

What the brigade needs to look at is WHY did these firefighters prefer to sleep on the floor than use reclining arm chairs.  The answer is totally obvious, the guys aren't getting a comfortable rest period and prefer the floor for resting. That should be telling the senior management team at GMFRS that the policy they introduced is wrong. The problem is that rather than admit they are wrong, they are trying to enforce a bad policy by fair means or foul.

Now I know that some of you will be screaming that they shouldn't be in bed and that other emergency workers don't get to sleep and in some respects I understand this argument, the other side of the coin is that there is only so much work that you can do on a fire station at night, watching work related DVD's & videos or studying at 4am is a sure fire way of making you fall to sleep. Then there is the fact that because you aren't actually doing anything other than staying awake for staying awake sake, the brain wants to do everything in its power to get you to rest. The result is you are 96% more likely to fall asleep at the wheel on your journey home at the end of your shift.

What the SMT at GMFRS need to look at is the fact that they have created a situation where their employees would rather do something which can have an effect on their health rather than use the equipment provided because the equipment isn't practicle for the purpose it is intended.  If this is the case then they need to do a review and address the situation without turning the issue in to a witch hunt. They also need to look at the fact that their rank (or role if we want to be pedantic) does not make every decision they make, the right deceision. Neither does it mean that others of a lower rank (or role) or wrong purely by definition of their rank (or role).  After all, weren't they once at the same level as these firefighters, and didn't these officers have the luxery of beds to get rest on during quiet periods?