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msar-riders - Re: [MSAR] job security

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Subject: Mounted search and rescue

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "IRVIN LICHTENSTEIN" <ilichten1@verizon.net>
  • To: "'Mounted search and rescue'" <msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [MSAR] job security
  • Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 00:30:25 -0500

You will have to check local and state laws. Currently in PA if you are on an emergency response as a fire, ems, or rescue squad member

your employer is not supposed to take any action against you except he does not have to pay you for lost time. He is not required to release you to respond but those employers who do get their fires put out by the local volunteers a little faster so if they can they do so. Before they left town one big unionized shop had it in their contract that any fire company members on the floor had to go to fires or get fired.  There is legislation pending to allow an employer to get a state tax CREDIT for the costs in having an employee respond to fires on company time. This includes lost time, wages, benefits, product, etc.  Lastly, if a volunteer is IOD the employer has to treat it as if you were IOJ except that the volunteer agency’s township of residence pays the comp claim (and they never pay).  If you are member of a recognized unit you are a public safety officer for state and federal benefits.  And in PA your horse is a police animal, protected 24/7 by state law.  Law enforcement officers and paid firefighters are not allowed to leave their work but if their home department wants to they can mutual aid them to a search or other agency.  And what you do on your time is your business, exception: Some career departments have contract clauses forbidding employment with any other emergency response organization without written permission.  In PA a volunteer SAR organization is an employer with the comp provided by the township of residence. Most municipal employees in areas covered by volunteer responders are allowed to respond in town.

 

The key to all this is being a member of a recognized emergency response organization.  If you are not dispatched through an ECC,EOC, PSAP, 9-11 center, if you do not have access to public safety agency radio communications, if the organization is not considered an emergency responder by the state police, or whatever the criterion are in your state, you don’t get protection or benefits.     

 

By the way, your employer does not have to save your job unless you are federalized in the Guard or Reserve, state activation does carry that protection. But, it is likely that your employer will be out of business during the disaster anyway.   PA pays for maximum life insurance for Guardsmen on duty, and classifies them as the same as other responders for death benefits—roughly $150,000 lump sum, dependent children’s tuition and other college costs guaranteed at any of the state’s 14 state universities, the state related private universities (Temple and Pitt), and the land grant university, Penn State. The student must apply for any available aid but the Commonwealth will make up the difference needed for a bachelor’s degree, including books and dormitory costs, without a needs test.

 

Irv Lichtenstein     


From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Becky
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2007 10:00 PM
To: msar-riders@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [MSAR] job security




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