New Jersey EMTs Rally to Protect Training Funds

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New Jersey Governor John Corzine has a job to do. He’s required to make some tough decisions to balance his state budget. Many feel like this is good fiscal policy especially in tough times like these. But he made the decision to direct 4 million in cuts at the training fund for the 60 some-odd volunteer EMT squads in the Jersey area.

You see, when you get a ticket in New Jersey, you pay an extra 50 cents to the training fund for the volunteers. The governor saw these funds as surplus and decided to nab them to boost his budget. Now the volunteers are up in arms. Last Wednesday they held a big rally to draw attention to the plight of the fund.

The volunteers say the fund is essential. They claim that without such vital funding, lives will be put at risk. I see their point. I was a volunteer for many years and the chief benefit for my time and energy was free training. There is an expectation on volunteer squads that, while the work force remains unpaid, there is still a give and take. Training and experience are huge to many volunteers.

I’d like to suggest a powerful strategy that might cause the governor to reconsider.

Stop Volunteering

Think about it. If your chief argument is that your skills and services are vital and that your service is essential to the community, what better way to make your point than to stop? Make the governor choose between paying providers or training volunteers. Make the governor answer to the media when folks call for emergency services and nobody responds. Wouldn’t it be a powerful platform to say, “You can pay for our training, or you can pay someone else to do the job instead.”

If I felt like I the free service I was providing was unappreciated, I don’t think it would be to far of a stretch to simply stop. “Hey guys, here’s my number. Call me if you decide you want to start this whole volunteer thing up again.”

I know some folks are going to suggest that this is unsupportive of the volunteers. I disagree. I think may volunteer squads across the country are essential to their communities. Is your volunteer squad one of them? The best way to find out is to shut down for a few days and see what kind of response you get from the community.

If they rally to your side with funding and equipment, consider yourself justified. If the service retires quietly into the night and other alternatives emerge to take your place, perhaps all that talk about essential services was smoke and mirrors. Either way someone will have proven their point.