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Monday, September 04, 2006

morale

Firefighter pay is a common topic on this blog. Not only local pay in the Roanoke Valley, but often times I incorporate other pay nationally as a comparison. More often than not I am speaking up for firefighters pay in the City of Roanoke because it directly effects me.

I do not do this to tick anyone off. I do not do this to rub it in anyone's face. I specifically do this to get firefighters involved. My intention is to educate and possibly get a response.

How many times have you thought about leaving your department to go somewhere else for better pay. How many of us actually follow through with it? We have firefighters leaving all the time for better pay, but not all of them. Most of us decide that our seniority or tenure is worth more than starting over.

What are we left with? Low Morale. We get bothered by the fact that someone else is getting paid better for doing the same job. This decreasing morale creates a domino effect of other issues.

But other City's cost of living is higher! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. I have always conceded that this is true, but not to the extent of our pay disparity across Virginia and the rest of the Nation.

Why not do something about it?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Money, money, money, Moooooney

Anonymous said...

the grass on the other side is not always as green as it seems,some guys left and came back(Another story) But they found out this department is not all that bad.The job is what you make of it,You control your own moral. Even with all the bullshit in roanoke fire-ems ,its still the best damn job! The pay needs to be better. We also need to address our fire equipment, some of the engines we are running suck and are dangerous! This city waste money every day like this week in the news the mayor monument in elm wood park, or the money they threw away trying to build a stadium next to the service center. But we cant get the money for a raise for the firefighters or a couple fire engines? This city has lost focus,we are here to serve our customers (Our citizens)Wake up roanoke before we put some more names on that firefighters monument at the transportation museum!