Posted by Bruce Bourgoine who blogs at
Kennebec Blues and Dirigo Blue.
For far too long we have been at the mercy of union jobs protecting the resulting performance mediocrity of firemen who just move up the pay ladder truck based on longevity without results. Outcomes may be haphazardly measured but the consequences of poor performance are borne by taxpayers who have to foot the bill for ineffectiveness. Furthermore our economy and the marketplace of capital are damaged when fires not extinguished early and entirely destroy valuable property.
The solution is obvious. Firemen are paid well but have a lot of time off and addressing this matter can save tax dollars, right size our municipal fire departments for optimum efficiency, and get better results. Fewer burnt buildings will keep us competitive in the global economy with less lost productivity in affected business enterprises, greater ability for construction to be focused on new building and not reconstruction, and a dividend for society in the form of less fire insurance costs.
Merit pay for firemen will reward high performers and allow us to cull poor performers who should be seeking a less challenging career. A high stakes results test should be uniformly applied to all fire departments, rural and urban. A reasonable measurement would be the rate of fire insurance losses by community. Further individualized development of this measure can be determined by individual fire and the degree of loss per responding fireman. Additionally an observation by management can assign weight to each individual fireman’s results to yield a fire insurance loss per individual to which a corresponding merit pay reward can be assigned. Perhaps saving $100,000 dollars in property means a $1,000 reward. With these kinds of high stakes, individuals will be incentivized to push themselves and their teammates to high achievement.
Naturally poor performers will be exposed to both management and co-workers so that they can self-select or be counseled out of firefighting. Not responding to fires with appropriate haste and not being at an appropriate number of fires for observation will sound the alarms of poor performance and attitude. Indeed, groups of inefficient staff with inadequate results can also be discovered and that information can be used to shut down failing stations to both save tax dollars and reward those at top of the performance charts. We can use fair warnings such as withholding funding for new fire trucks and firefighting tools to prompt units with less than average results to shape up before they slip into the failing category.
Fewer and better performing stations with staff more focused on being in the field and aggressively fighting fires will result in tax savings and insurance savings. We will have applied good business practices to douse inefficiencies in government fire protection services. We can even charter independent for-profit fire companies using real world marketplace creativity in communities that fail across the board to introduce added competiveness.
Merit pay for firefighters is simple common sense. Critics will harp on fire danger being higher in a particular year or individual firefighters needing more training but the transparent bottom-line results and motivating factors in a system that measures outcomes in costs will focus attention on real world results just like those every other overtaxed worker and small businessperson has to deal with every day. This is a model that can also be built on with regard to other public sector employees. Forest firefighters are an obvious next step. We can also place cops on commission. Even our military efforts could benefit from offering a higher degree of personal motivation to individual soldiers to achieve victory by reinstituting the historically motivating forces of pillage and plunder.
Let’s put merit in public service!