State Leave Legislation

[RADIOMAN015]

Boy, if I was that town manager I might be prompted to say that I'd rather pay full time salaries for a fire department and tell your relative to see if he can find some volunteers to do public works.  That town has made the active choice to not have a paid fire department and to depend on volunteers and to gripe about losing some time from public workers who are volunteer firefighters is just dumb.  While it may make the DPW job a bit harder overall they're saving the city a ton of money.

Well again I'm giving examples of how a good intentioned policy can affect other departments that also have operational duties.  So would your answer change IF it is in the middle of a blizzard or the aftermath of a hurricane, where the roads have to be opened or remain open
RM   

[Flying Pig]

There's a huge difference between a company voluntarily encouraging community service (I have an understanding with my company that permits me to leave on short notice for emergency services), and a state mandating paid time off for the same.

Yes, agreed.  But RRLE and Radio seem to believe that companies have no community service interest whatsoever, and if you're not working you have no value to the organization.

I'm betting that in most wings there's some 'retired' members readily available to perform (especially the flying) tasks at hand and others that have enough flexibility to provide most other support.   

You can pass all the laws you want and every company can decide that they will allow a certain amount of time "on the clock" away from the workplace performing community service.  HOWEVER, again it gets down to the "reality" of the workplace and the sense of the member on how his/her absence may affect their career and on the job relationships.

Frankly I think most local/state/federal civil service workers get enough time off/ and excellent benefits as it stands right now.   Looking at the Alabama law, guardsmen/reservists are getting paid for their activation and I would sincerely hope that the citizens aren't also paying their state full salary at the same time, there's a good double dipping example.

As an example in my state's state police, there was a 'flaw' in the policy that allowed the guardsmen/reservists that were performing "inactive" duty for training (e.g. your typical weekend type duty) and not having to take vacation time, I'm not sure IF they were drawing pay from the state also, BUT basically now if it's "inactive" duty for training it's vacation time or "no pay" status.

I have a relative that supervises a small town DPW function, and a few of the crew (under 10 people in the department, approx 25% are Vol fd) where also on the town's volunteer fire department.  Well every time there was a call they would have to leave the job.   He finally asked the town manager how this should be handled, because again they are "volunteers", he has a budget, and the work they are getting paid to do isn't being done while they are fighting fires/responding to other type emergencies.  So in essence his department is subsidizing the volunteer fire department.

I'm not sure at least at the taxpayer funded local/county/state government level that I want my tax dollar subsidizing employee "voluntarily" doing other things that have nothing to do with the job that they were hired for.   IF they want to take unpaid leave, that's fine with me BUT I don't think I need to be subsidizing this.

HOWEVER, what a private company or non profit organization decides on their own, without any "cram down" laws, is also fine with me, except again with the member knowing the 'reality' of the organizational dynamics and making an informed decision.
RM       

What happens, at least in CA when a cop gets activated is that they get their cop salary for 30 days.  After that, the agency pays the difference between their Guard pay and their cop pay so that they can at least meet their basic pay.  Lets face it, you have a cop making a pretty decent salary, and then they get activated for a year, you woud destroy someone by doing that.  Going from making my pay to making E-5, I would lose everything.  So they at least make sure I get my base pay.   But I do get that deal once per year for the two weeks.  I would actually get 30 days per year paid for military service.  Not excessive by any means.
Now..I DO NOT get that deal for training, drills, etc.  If I decided to re-enlist today and left for a 6 month tech school, I would making E-5 pay for those 6 months.  In my case, my schedule my be Fri Sat Sun Mon for my work days.  If I have drill, its on me to make that up.  I can sign up for shifts on straight time to make up the difference or take vacation.  But if your a reservist, my dept is pretty good about not assigning you to work weekends.

I had a guy at my last agency who was doing his drills and then signing up to cover shift to make up his hours.  Should have been doing it on straight time.  Instead, for about a 3 yr period, he was clocking it as overtime.  I believe he is now a sales rep at a local used car dealership.  In addition, he was putting himself on active orders through the military.  He was going in the morning, then excusing himself in the late morning and then coming back and working OT shifts at work.   He got nailed from both ends.  Lost a 15 yr cop career and went from Army Guard E-7 to Pvt and booted.  I dont recall hw many thousands of dollars the Guard determined he had "stolen" in falsified drill attendance.

As far as private industry, if a company wants to take a loss by letting you go, thats on them.  I believe they should be required to do it for military service, but not mandated by law so I can leave to volunteer.   I do have issue also with governemnt allowing people to leave to volunteer.  Reminds me of a guy in my Marine unit who was allowed by the command to get off early to go volunteer?  Huh???

I think CAP is trying to draw and coorelation and comparing themselves to much with the Reserves with this leave act issue.

[blackrain]

I could see a provision for say up to 2 weeks for CAP service in a declared disaster (by a state's governor for example) but that's about as far as I would go. Otherwise I could see a potential for abuse by some.

As for military reserve component service that's whole different animal and should be treated as such. This year alone I've taken nearly 8 weeks of leave (some military and the rest annual/vacation) to cover my military training. I'm almost out of vacation at this point. I've managed to not go on military LWOP this year but not next year as the training commitment will only get bigger. 70 something days in addition to drill weekends. They've gone to 1 year title 10 mobilizations from the 16-18 month mobilizations that used to be the norm. Sounds good in the papers but the total training is really the same. What you do is spend 2 weeks on orders come home for 2 months go on orders for 4 to 6 more weeks then come home for 3 months the actually mobilize for a year just as an example. Plays havoc with insurance, civilian employment and especially young enlisted troops as far as a place to live etc. Personally, I think your better off mobilizing on title 10 for a straight shot.

But I digress