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It seems to me that an awful lot of our National Guards are emergency response personnel. When a war comes, and they go to fight, our police and fire-- heck! many companies lose specialists tasked with computer security. Perhaps cities need to implement a rule about how many members of its police and fire departments can be reservists and national guard?
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There are rules.
The problem is enforcing them.
Annually each reservist signs a form stating his employment and if it is critical to emergency services. The Fire Chief certainly is critical. But is a single fireman critical? The chief will be told to transfer to the individual reserve and maintain a current status by correspondence course. The unit will probably take the word of the fireman that he would not be missed.
The employer needs to know how many of it’s people are reservists, and have some sort of a policy on the maximum number allowed. The military will honor any reasonable policy from a public service organization such as a fire department. Large departments have polices and the monitor the situration.
But all to often a small department employs a reservist and takes his/her recommendation that someone would be good employee. After several such recommendations a major percentage of the department are reservists in the same unit. The problem is not noticed until the unit is called up.
When I was involved with such things I never heard of a situation that could not be solved to everyones satisfaction, IF the situation was brought up before there was a call up.
We recently had a hostage situation near here. It lasted about 7 hours before police snipers shot the hostage taker in the arm and leg. Flash grenades were launched into the building before it was stormed. The hostage was uninjured.
It turns out that 4 police officers involved in the assault (including both snipers) were reservists who had served in Iraq. As was one of the EMT’s on the scene, who treated the bad guy.
They were all interviewed as nauseam, but the general gist was “compared to what we did in Iraq, this operation was a piece of cake”.
So the experience gained by reservists over there does generate some unexpected benefits to us here on the home front.
I have no objection to former military people serving as emergency response. Indeed, all things considered if I were ever hiring such women and men would be given first priority. It is the prospect of having them called away which worries me...
I can't fathom attempting to bar someone that wishes to serve their country, AND their local area. They shouldn't be forced to choose, nor should they be discriminated against in the hiring/promotion area. Yes, it can be very difficult on their 'real' job when they get called up. But you're advocating telling people, WE're more important, so YOU can't serve others too. That's beyond petty. That's selfish and loathsome to the nation as a whole.
Give me a fire department straped by deployment of their reserve/guard components over a fire department that ensure their forces don't serve their nation at a higher level.
Given membership recruiting difficulties (a problem for years, nobody wants to volunteer) if such a bar were to exist, we would not be able to man the station 24 hours a day (people aren't actually there, but are available at a short notice). We'd only be able to provide services at (probably) night.
A significant number of fire houses in NJ are volunteer. I believe that situation is true for many other states (Pennsylvania, for example). If such a bar were put into place, more localities would have difficulty in recruiting and manning their stations.