I forgot to mention before that there are 87 volunteer brigades in Hamburg which are part of the Hamburg Fire Service!!! Same proceedures, comms, training, equipment etc etc..
If they can do it why couldnt we ?
How unionised is the Hamburg Fire Service?
The Hamburg fire service has a union which represents the fire service country wide with a branch in Hamburg.
The majority of firefighters arent in the union and as such the union isnt very militant (answering your second question)
How militant is the union?
Answered
How generous are the laws governing f/f leave from work?
The law required employers to allow volunteer firefighters to attend firecalls and the fireservice pays the employer the hourly value rate of the firefighter during his/her absence whilst attending a call....However employers dont like employing firefighters because they are never there and despite the fact that they get the hourly rate back the true value of the employee (ie the work they do) is never recovered.
As a result of this the volunteers do not attend any minor incidents at all leaving that to the full time brigades. This results in the volunteers only being called to actual "going" incidents which is actually OK because when the pager goes at least they arent leaving family or work to clean up an oil spill or go to alarms etc etc.
Is their volunteer model perhaps closer to the SAAS model, where volunteers
live at the station for 1 (or more) 12hr shift per week?
No they dont live at the station at all...Of course all the units who think that volunteering is more important than being employed still hang around the station like they do at home. But cant leave the station without a Lt anyway.
I'd argue there's no reason, but then, I'm a vollie, & my job isn't 'threatened'
by vollies.
Theres no one being threatened by anyone in Germany a set of rules is applied using risk and response based criteria as to whether a full time station needs to exist and if the model says yes then a full time station WILL be created no ifs buts or maybes.
cheers