I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast
that is Transcend.
Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did
for 14 years.
Suffering from sleep deprivation, body composition challenges, mental health challenges, libido,
hair loss, etc.
Now when it comes to the world of hormone replacement and peptide therapy, what I have
seen is a shift from doctors telling us that we were within normal limits, which was definitely
incorrect all the way to the other way now where men's clinics are popping up left, right
and center.
So I myself wanted to find a reputable company that would do an analysis of my physiology
and then offer supplementations without ramming, for example, hormone replacement therapy down
my throat.
Now I came across Transcend because they have an altruistic arm and they were a big reason
why the 7X project I was a part of was able to proceed because of their generous donations.
They also have the Transcend foundations where they are actually putting military and first
responders through some of their therapies at no cost to the individual.
So my own personal journey so far filled in the online form, went to Quest, got blood
drawn and a few days later I'm talking to one of their wellness professionals as they
guide me through my results and the supplementation that they suggest.
In my case specifically, because I transitioned out the fire service five years ago and been
very diligent with my health, my testosterone was actually in a good place.
So I went down the peptide route and some other supplements to try and maximize my physiology
knowing full well the damage that 14 years of shift work has done.
Now I also want to underline because I think this is very important that each of the therapies
they offer, they will talk about the pros and cons.
So for example, a lot of first responders in shift work, our testosterone will be low,
but sometimes nutrition, exercise and sleep can offset that on its own.
So this company is not going to try and push you down a path, especially if it's one that
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So whether it's libido, brain fog, inflammation, gut health, performance, sleep, this is definitely
one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.
So to learn more, go to transcendcompany.com or listen to episode 808 of the Behind the
Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on
the show collegiate athlete Pasco County firefighter and union board member Dixon Phillips.
Now I'm extremely excited to bring Dixon's story onto the show as it is just another
layer to reinforce the importance of changing the firefighter work week.
As many of you know, I've been pushing for the 24 72 to become an industry standard for
about seven years now.
If you missed episode 854, that was with Boynton Beach chief Hugh Bruder and they implemented
that new schedule about a year and a half ago.
So you got to hear how they made it happen, the financial savings that they've experienced.
Now Dixon's story is the other end of the spectrum, which is phenomenal because they
will be going to that same shift schedule in 2026.
So you will hear how they strengthen relationships between operations, administration and their
employer.
And ultimately, again, it was the savings, the money that they were bleeding through
overtime and all the other expenses that they realized they could front load and also invest
in the health of their people.
So we discuss a host of topics from his own journey into collegiate football, his transition
into the fire service, the loss of a friend through work related cancer, the mental health
struggles, how they were able to present the 24 72 as a better option, how that in turn
improved recruitment, their progressive decon programs and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredibly important conversation, as I say every week, please
just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show,
leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you, Dixon Phillips.
Enjoy.
Well, Dixon, I want to start by saying firstly, thank you to our mutual friend Pablo for the
time.
Thank you for connecting us Pablo Jenner.
And secondly, I want to welcome you on to the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Thank you for having me, James.
Really excited.
I'm really happy that Pablo connected us.
I think it's gonna be great.
Well there's obviously a very powerful reason that he did and we'll get into that in a little
while.
But I would love to start the very beginning of your journey.
I mean, you've got some interesting chapters prior to the fire service.
So let's start at the very beginning.
Tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic, what
your parents did, how many siblings.
So, I was born in upstate New York, a small town called Schenectady, moved down to Tampa,
Florida when I was two, three years old.
So I was raised down here in Tampa.
My mom's been in education my whole life.
She was a teacher and now she works for Head Start program.
My dad actually was a, he's been a salesman his whole life.
So he does remodels down in South Florida.
My stepfather is also, he's a part of the Lakeland Housing Authority and runs a program
called Youth Build.
So kind of teaching troubled youths or those that were unable to, didn't have the ability
to go to college.
They kind of teach them trades and put them in the workforce.
Yeah, I went to high school at Hillsborough High School, which is local in Tampa, Florida.
Played sports my whole life.
I actually ended up hurting myself my senior year in high school.
I was looking to go play football in college and had an injury, kind of made things a little
difficult during recruiting.
So I went to a small school in Illinois for a semester.
My mom ended up getting sick around that time.
So thought it would be best to move back home, be close to her.
Moved home and honestly started working.
I thought that was going to be kind of where my school journey ended and I was going to
figure out what I was going to do after that.
I was very fortunate that one of my high school coaches kind of reached out to me and asked
if I still wanted to play football going forward.
I had an opportunity at that time to walk on at Florida State University.
So I did that.
I was there for two years and then ended up having some issues academically and kind of
was forced to come home.
And it was at that time where I had no idea what I was going to do.
It was definitely one of the darkest moments of my life.
Telling my mom who's been in education my whole life that, yeah, I've got out of school
is kind of a hard conversation to have.
But I was very fortunate that my mentor at that time, his name is Lydell Ross and he
was a football player at Ohio State University.
He was a running back.
I knew him through the gym and he's a Tampa firefighter.
So I reached out to him.
He was actually the first phone call I made when I found out that I was going to be dismissed
from school.
And, you know, he kind of took me on his wing and just said, look, you need to go to fire
school.
The fire service is made for people like us.
And that was what I did.
Came home, figured out what I needed to do, went to EMT school, fire school, and was very
fortunate to get hired pretty quickly after graduation with Pasco County Fire Rescue.
That was in September of 2015.
You know, that's that's where my journey in the fire service began.
You know, Pasco, when I got hired, was a very small department.
It was looked at as the training grounds for all the surrounding agencies.
You know, we're paid the lowest work the most hours as anybody surrounding us.
I loved where I was at.
I loved the people in our department.
And that was a part of the reason why I stayed.
You know, we really have like a family atmosphere.
But in 2018, I thought it would be best for me and my family to make that transition to
one of the higher paid departments, you know, with more time off, just better benefits overall.
I ended up getting hired with the city of Tampa in October of 2018.
I was there for a very short period of time, only for six months.
And I realized very quickly that what I had at Pasco County, I did not have in the city
of Tampa.
And for me, that family atmosphere, you know, the environment that I worked in was a lot
more important than those benefits that I may have had when I was with the city.
So I came back to Pasco.
Actually, my first shift back was April 1st of 2019.
And from that moment, kind of just decided, you know what?
I'm going to look to help change some things.
So in 2019, I was elected on our executive board of our union.
And I've held that position as a station representative ever since.
And you know, I think we've made a lot of changes.
We're leaps and bounds from even 2019, let alone 2015 when I got hired.
Beautiful.
Well, I want to go all the way back to early life and then we'll obviously come and we'll
unpack all the things when it comes to the fire service.
You talked about the Head Start program first.
So educate me on what that is.
So my mom, the Head Start program is a program for, you know, children going through school.
It's kind of like a preschool type program where parents don't have the ability to pay
for child care.
So they qualify for this program.
And you know, it's basically like a preschool daycare for underprivileged families.
So what is what are some of the things that you hear your mom consistently talking about?
I'm all for the proactive solutions of some of the issues that we face.
And the perfect example is that looking down your nose at whatever group of people and
saying, you know, for example, let's just choose obesity.
Oh, all they have to do is wake up and, you know, eat salad and go for a run.
And it's that easy.
Well, if that child is all they've ever known is fast food and snacks and, you know, inactivity,
where are you expecting this information to come from?
So when there are proactive solutions, when we're removing barriers to entry, like the
Head Start program, I'm always intrigued.
I think it deserves more airtime.
So what are some of the challenges or things that you heard her discuss with that, you
know, four decade experience that she has?
Well, the biggest thing that she's always said to me is don't come in with a problem.
You come in with a solution.
You know, that's that's one thing that I feel like we struggle a lot in the fire service.
But, you know, obviously, when we look at.
You know, you're talking about, you know, breaking barriers, don't looking down, don't
look down on somebody based on, you know, their appearance or whatever, because you
don't know their upbringing.
So how do we get that?
Like your example, obese person, how do we get them to become healthy?
You know, kind of identifying what is their motivation?
You know, everyone obviously needs like specific training, teaching to get them to where they
want to be, where we want to see them.
But yeah, I mean, the biggest thing is with her, like I said, is finding solutions for
problems, not just coming with a problem.
What are some of the barriers that she's seeing, though?
I mean, obviously, someone had the foresight to create the Head Start program and address
this issue.
But for a lot of people listening, you know, hopefully they're they're stable families
and they have the means to get their kids into this school or this daycare or whatever
it ends up being.
What are some of the challenges these families are facing that the Head Start program is
helping with?
Well, I mean, obviously financial, right?
I mean, I don't have children, but I know people that do that when you when you're working
a full time job that you're not able to stay home with your with your kids.
You're not able to afford any daycare or, you know, get into private schools or maybe
it's a transportation issue.
But you know, this program is just allowed.
It kind of takes that relief off those parents where they don't have to worry about their
children when they're at work and they know that they're focusing on early education,
right?
They're reading, they're getting hands on learning, which is extremely important, you
know, at a young age to make sure that they develop appropriately.
And yeah, that's really from talking to her.
It seems like that's that's what it's about.
It's kind of taking that relief off that family.
Just know that your child is going to be taken care of.
You know, you don't have to worry about any financial costs to go along with it.
So, yeah, I mean, a perfect example, we had the storm blow through.
What was it yesterday?
Through here, yeah, and they closed the schools in Marion County.
Now I am, you know, doing this for a living now.
So my son is 16.
So when they close it, all right, no big deal.
You know, he can literally make his own food.
And, you know, even if he was younger, I would be here.
But that would impact a family that was, you know, maybe a single parent working one or
two jobs.
And now all of a sudden, my kids aren't in school anymore.
So these are things that a lot of us don't think about.
But you know, some people really struggle with.
Right.
So what about you say the Youth Build program?
Yes.
So my stepdad, he's the director for the Youth Build program over in the Lakeland Housing
Authority.
So, so talk to me about that.
Because again, you know, we kind of get ferried into the academic route.
Oh, if you want to be successful, you go to high school, you go to college, et cetera,
et cetera.
But you and I are the product of trade schools.
And I would argue one of the best professions on the planet.
So talk to me about the mentorship element and the proactive mentoring of our young men
and women and enabling them to find the construction industry.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's important, right?
I mean, you see it all the time.
People talk about how, you know, interest in the trade industries is down, you know,
the lowest it's ever been.
So being able to take, you know, men and women that might not have been successful in the
academic world, but finding, you know, their niche, you know, taking them in this, it's
a free program, you know, in finding what trade works for them and making sure that,
you know, when they graduate this program, they also help with job placement and then
they're going to have, you know, hopefully a long career and be financially stable.
You know, it's one of my best friends was a high school dropout GED and, you know, he
struggled for some years, but he went up through landscaping, ended up getting his general
contractor's license as well.
And now he has a thriving business, you know, so there's a lot of different routes to go
other than through school.
And like you said, you and I are prime examples, which is why I love the fact that he's so
involved in this YouthBuild program, because I look at, you know, the students that he
has and they're just like me.
So you know, I think it's great.
Absolutely.
Well, you talked about being in school and getting injured.
You're obviously, you know, playing football was your main sport.
I want to get into injury in a second, but career aspirations at that point in your life,
what were you dreaming of becoming?
Was it a professional football player?
No, honestly, I definitely knew that that that was definitely a dream, right?
To me, it was I wanted to really just just go to school and go to school for free.
That was the biggest thing.
You know, didn't have I had bright ended up getting bright futures.
And my mom and, you know, my dad were playing into Florida prepaid.
So I had some money to go get my associate's degree and go to community college.
But obviously, I wanted to go play football at the next level because any kid that's playing
any sport as a younger, that's your dream, right?
Is to go play the next level.
So when I was in high school, I didn't know which route I wanted to go in terms of like
professionally.
I was leaning more towards law or even politics.
And that was I was a business major and political science major when I was at Florida State.
So obviously, it didn't it didn't work out.
So when it came, it came into play a little bit later in a different way.
It did.
So what about the injury?
What did you do?
And then how did you deal with that?
Because a lot of people, even if they're younger, if you know there's at least going to be a
journey for, you know, X amount of years past that moment, you it's easy to kind of again,
the same as we'll talk about in the fire service.
You know, you have that tribe, which is your football team.
You have the identity.
Well, I'm a high school football player.
So what was the injury and how did that impact you not only physically, but mentally?
Yes.
I mean, I got injured in basketball season.
I went up to block a shot, block the shot, came down, landed on the other guy's foot
and broke my ankle pretty bad.
I had some small schools that had offered me at the time because of that injury, they
ended up getting pulled.
The one college that was still interested in me when I broke my ankle was the University
of Buffalo.
But their head coach at the time was Turner Gill.
He ended up leaving after a really good season and going to coach at the University of Kansas.
When he left, new head coach came in, you know, kind of cleaned house with the coaching
staff and never heard from them again.
So the recruiting process as a whole was very difficult to kind of navigate.
You know, you have interest, you know, a lot of schools that would visit my high school
and not because of me.
We had some absolutely insane players on our team that were very highly ranked.
But you know, having these college coaches there and showing interest in you and then
really kind of dealing with that, nothing coming to fruition.
And then right when you're picking up some steam and it looks like I'm going to get,
you know, a couple more offers and have a commitment and I have this injury that kind
of pushed a lot of people away.
And then going from, you know, these Division I school to a small Division II school in
Illinois, that was another, you know, kind of thing that I had to deal with.
The hardest was not signing on National Signing Day.
That was the big one, right?
So you know, every high school, they go in the auditorium, they have a whole display,
the media is there and they make a whole thing out of it and to be sitting there and not
be on that stage with some other teammates, that was really difficult.
But you know, you just kind of, you learn to handle, I learned to handle adversity at
a really young age.
And you know, I definitely think it made me stronger for some other things that would
come later on in life.
But yeah, that was a hard time.
It was a really hard time.
Yeah, but I think you hear this obviously now in our professions and we're understanding
it more, but if you watch the documentary The Weight of Gold, even extremely successful
athletes, say you're an Olympian, you know, you've aged out, you know, this is your last
Olympics and you won gold that year.
But literally moments after you step off that podium, now what?
Your entire identity from probably four years old up to that point has now been changed
and now you're not that thing anymore.
So it's interesting whether it's at the high school level or further, this also has an
impact on us.
Right.
And that's, that's one thing I tell a lot of athletes that I know, you know, still that
that are in high school and in college right now is that listen, at some point, the game
is going to end for you.
Some of you are going to be lucky enough to play for a lot of years.
Some of you, like you said, that last game, your senior year high school is going to be
the last time you ever put pads on.
You know, so that's, that's difficult because like you said earlier, you know, that's kind
of your identity.
That's, that's your family.
You know, you're with your football team, that's your support system.
And then all of a sudden now you lose it.
You know, losing that locker room is one of the biggest hurdles that you have to jump
when you no longer are playing sports.
And it's something that I've talked about also with a lot of firefighters that are former
college professional, even high school athletes, you know, finding the fire service was the
best thing to happen to them.
And it's definitely the best thing to happen to me.
You know, it's just, it gives you that, that team environment, that family feeling all
over again.
And I think it's important.
I know we're going to touch on it later, you know, talking about recruiting and how nationwide
there is a recruit, a shortage of entry level firefighters.
And you know, hopefully one day we can kind of steal some of these former athletes and
bring them into our profession.
You know, I think there's definitely a market for that.
So being able to find them and help them get into this career and also find that second
family I think would be, would be a big deal.
Absolutely.
Well, you mentioned about your friend saying the fire service is made for people like us.
Talk to me about your academy and you hire experience going from football player to firefighter.
Yeah.
So the fire academy was awesome.
It was one of, it was like the best four months of my life.
I had a great, great group of people that I was in school with.
It would obviously, you know, you're going through your, it's physically demanding every
morning you're working out, which was just like how it was when, when I was at Florida
state, you know, I mean, we're it's workouts every morning and then you're going to class.
So in the fire academy, you come in, it's an hour workout and then we're in the classroom
learning and then in the afternoon you're back out there in your gear and you're doing
physical work.
You know, it was, I would say challenge.
It's definitely challenging because it's different type of work, right?
You're learning all these new skills that, you know, you never, you never learned before.
I mean, I could barely tie my shoes and then now I have to learn how to tie all these different
knots and you know, stuff like that.
And you know, yeah, it was, it was awesome, but great group of people.
My instructors were incredible.
Actually my lead fire school instructor is now my fire chief.
And I mean, he was instrumental when I was in the academy of, you know, being that kind
of that idol, you know, that, that person that you envision yourself being, you know,
the movers and shakers of your department is what he would always say.
And you know, so I was very lucky to have a great group of people that I was in class
with and also some great role models that we could look up to and say, you know, this
is what I want to be at the end of my career.
Where did you go to Academy?
It's called Leary technical.
So it was actually like the Tampa fire Academy.
So we had all city of Tampa fire instructors and yeah.
So you mentioned about going to Pasco for us.
It's funny with, with Tampa, when I was in Anaheim, California and I moved back to East
because I had a little boy and my ex wanted to go be close to a family again.
And family is always going to come first for me, even though I adore this profession.
And so I was looking at Orange County, some other places, but Tampa was another one.
And I kind of got a fire boner to be completely honest, cause the special operations side,
they had the dive rescue.
So there was a lot of Marine firefighting going on as well, but also there was, they
called it high rise insertion firefighting.
I think is what it was.
And you'd get dangled from a helicopter on the top of the skyscraper and then fight
from the roof down.
And I was like, all right, beautiful.
And I actually called one of the Tampa guys and I got an awesome human being and I thank
him to the state for just being so candid.
But I think he was part of the special operations group too.
And he was like, it's a great department here.
He said, but just to let you know, we're in shambles at the moment and we're probably
going to making cuts to the people we already have.
Do not test here.
And I was like, okay.
And this was 2008, but yeah.
So on paper it looked amazing, but at that time, this was the post crash, people were
not wanting to hire anymore.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, my experience there and the people are great.
I think you find that anywhere in the fire service.
No matter where you go, the people are great.
It wasn't the family atmosphere though that I had when I was in Pasco.
The crew that I had before I left, every Tuesday morning you got off, we went golfing.
All of our families knew each other.
We had monthly dinners or going over to our captain's house once a month, making sure
that we were a family.
And just didn't have that environment in the city.
And ultimately that was what kind of made my decision to go back was just, you know,
what we do is so much more than just coming to work, doing your job and going home.
I feel like if, you know, I tell our new hires, if that's what you're looking for, you should
find something else because there's a lot other jobs that pay a lot better than we do
to just show up, go to work and go home.
Absolutely.
Well, people say the grass is always greener, you know, and we'll have guys that leave and
go to different departments.
Sometimes they'll come back.
I mean, Pablo went for think Marion to you guys to back to Marion and now to Jacksonville.
I got that right.
Jacksonville.
And he's riding a tiller truck.
So I don't blame him.
Best job in the fire service.
Right.
I did in the west.
Right.
But at the same time, there's this kind of this double edged sword.
Because if you stay and you put the work in, in the right environment, you can make your
department a lot better.
And that, you know, is absolutely the case, obviously, with you.
And we're going to hear about that.
Conversely, though, some people myself in the last place I worked, it doesn't matter
how much work you put in.
Some organizations are just so cancerous at that moment that you're not going to fix it.
And so for your own mental health, that might be the time to transition to a different department.
So the answer is not right or wrong.
It's like, which is the right fit for you and why are you leaving?
If you're just expecting everyone to fix another department and you do nothing, you're probably
going to be disappointed.
But if you've really, really tried to make differences where you work and it's just negatively
affecting your mental health and there is a department that's actually being progressive
and growing, maybe that's the right place for you to go to.
Right.
I mean, the grass is greener where you water it, right?
You know, everywhere has their own set of problems, you know, and it's in like, you
said it's about each individual.
If your is your department's issues, are they manageable for you?
You know, if not, and like you said, for your mental health and for your family's well-being,
you know, maybe it's best for you to make that jump to another department.
I left Pasco because we were starting to improve.
We had a chief that had came from another department and he was that bulldog.
This is what we're going to get done.
I mean, had all the documentation in the world to prove why we needed what he said we needed.
Now Pasco County, from my knowledge at the time, I'd only been there for three years,
but the history of this department has been.
We don't we can't afford it.
We're not going to do it.
You know, just no to everything, no to any progress.
And that's why everybody left.
Like when I got hired at Pasco in 2015, there was a 10 year firefighter at my station on
a shift that left and went to the city of Tampa.
I mean, you invest 10 years in the agency and then you leave in year one, you get a
pay raise and you're working less and insurance is cheaper.
You know, why would you not go for your family?
So when I came back, it was definitely one of those things like, all right, now we have
to really fight to make this better.
You have to find unconventional ways.
You know, obviously what we're currently doing is not working.
So in 2019, as a union, we started getting political.
You know, that's where you make your change is on the politics side.
You know, and it was very difficult for us when, you know, I mean, it wasn't until just
this year that our county commissioners actually voted to increase taxes so that we could have
more trucks on the road, more staffing, you know, obviously an increase in pay and a reduction
in work hours because we were losing so many people.
So it's not something that you're going to fix overnight.
I mean, it took us four years just in lobbying to get to where we are today.
I had John Knox on the show, we were talking to support hit record.
He was the LAPD, sorry, LAPD firefighter who was just terminated on the vaccine mandate,
you know, in November 2023, which is another entire conversation.
It's insane.
But what he talked about was some of the money that when they spent a lot of money in L.A.
backing politicians.
And I saw this in Anaheim and Orange County and, you know, other areas is there are there
are many cases where firefighters have spent a lot of time canvassing a lot of, you know,
union money getting behind someone and then either they don't get in or they get in and
then they turn their back on the fire service.
So how were you able to navigate that specifically with the people that you were interacting
with?
So the first thing for us was we were having response times that were 15 minutes plus on
a third of all of our calls, your response time was 15 minutes.
Very easy to stand in front of them in a public meeting and tell them that this is unacceptable.
You know, we did not stand in front of them one time and ask for raises, ask for more
time off.
We simply told them these response times are insane.
You know, bringing examples, you know, getting public records requests on calls that were
being run, you know, trauma alerts, big accidents, cardiac arrest, you know, obviously we everybody
knows right after eight minutes in a cardiac arrest, you start experiencing brain death.
So when it takes us 15 minutes to get there, it almost makes you ask, why are we going?
You know, by the time we get there, this patient, there's nothing that we're going to be able
to do.
So standing in front of the board of commissioners and just having facts, you know, you can't
dispute numbers, we you can dispute emotion, you can dispute policy, you can dispute politics
all day long.
But if I'm coming to you with facts that are saying more than half of our calls, it takes
10 minutes plus to get there on a third of them.
It's 15 minutes.
Here's all the examples of people that have died.
Here's people that have had long term, you know, issues because of our lack of response
in the way that you get improved response is you'll have to increase taxes to pay for
the services on the back end.
That tax increase is also going to help us get more pay more time off because you're
talking about having the ability to hire more firefighters.
So that was how we attacked it.
And it was about two years before we started making progress.
And you know, to be quite frank, we pissed them off.
You know, they they knew every other Tuesday that there was going to be 30 to 40 firefighters
standing at the Board of County Commission meeting.
There was going to be three or four of us that were going to stand up there and speak
and we were going to tear them apart.
And then we take, you know, obviously take the clips and push on social media.
And the next thing you know, their emails and their phones are blowing off the hook
because this is information that the public doesn't know, you know, and that was really
how we started the conversation.
You know, we had a little struggle with one of our members who had was diagnosed with
job related cancer, which I'm sure we'll get to later.
And we hammered them on that, too.
The response to that, I think, really made them, OK, we need to we need to fix something
here.
We need to start helping these guys out because their seats were getting really hot.
You know, unfortunately, it has to get that way.
So it should not have to.
Right.
These people should your elected officials, your number one priority should be public
safety.
So it should not be difficult to get them to move and make things better.
But when it is, you need to have 30, 40 guys and girls showing up for these meetings and
speaking in front of them.
You know, that that raises eyebrows when they start seeing the room packed with firefighters.
I've talked about this quite a bit.
Two things.
Firstly, when you talk about the community's response and I'm literally talking to someone
I can't remember who it was now literally a day or two ago.
But when fire stations are closed, when staffing goes from four to three on a rig or, God forbid,
three to two, which is insane again, no one tells the community, hey, your level of service
has been diminished.
No one cuts them a refund on some of their taxes because, you know, when the stations
ran out or closed or whatever it is.
So I realize that there's a huge disconnect between what the public thinks we do and what
we actually do.
And anyone listening now, I'm sure, has heard why is there a fire engine on a medical call?
Well, we've been doing EMS in our area for 50 years now.
So that, again, shows what a terrible job we've done of branding, of telling the, you
know, teaching the community what we actually do and why we need the things that we need.
As you started having these conversations, was there a sense of realization that they
were actually were quite uneducated on the very roles that some of these people that
worked under them were doing?
Absolutely.
That it was amazing to see how not only does the public have no idea what we do, but our
county commissioners have no idea what we do.
You know, it was I can't tell you how many times I got the what took you so long, you
know, during that 2019 to 2022, really, you know, in those years, it was almost every
call.
And I even had people telling me that they call 911 and it just rings and rings and rings.
It's like, OK, so we have a real big problem here.
Well, and then the public's asking, what do you do?
Well, contact your county commissioner.
I mean, that's how you make change.
But the public, like I said, we really started engaging a lot on social media and trying
to educate them through their our following increase drastically.
We actually as a union board, we now have a, you know, social media.
What am I trying to say?
Like the head of a head of social media on our executive board, that that's all he does.
He just worries about public engagement.
You know, if the department isn't going to educate them, well, then we're going to educate
them.
And like I said, I mean, you would actually be amazed at how many people watch the at
least in our area, the online county commission meetings.
So we're standing up there and we're you know, you have three minutes to speak and we're
talking about response times and how the call volumes increase and how our staffing has
not how our trucks have not.
And this is how long you have to wait.
And when you call 911, I mean, it's a scary thing, right, especially in the older population.
You have a heart attack, you call 911, it takes 15 minutes, you know, that's life or
death.
So a lot of a lot of our public, you know, they got involved in sort of making phone
calls and sending emails.
And that's what caused the change in my opinion.
So a lot of these issues we were talking earlier about being proactive with the youth in the
community.
It's so reactive in the fire service, you know, and when there are initiatives that
need to be made, and people will go, well, how are we going to find the money for that?
And I'm the most ridiculously dumb person when it comes to math, I just am.
It's the way that I'm wired.
But I understand the false economy of working your responders into the ground of being under
staff paying over time, you know, etc, etc, etc.
And how that is a complete false economy, because that long term costs way more money
than a well staff department that's, you know, given the rest and recovery.
So of course, we're going to transition into work weeks and stuff.
But again, as you're getting through this journey, you know, you talked about being
a stepping stone department, like Marion County is where I live, you know, people come in,
they let you train them.
And then they leave with all that knowledge and experience and the costs from what I understand
here are $15,000 per firefighter between equipment and training and the rest benefits.
So what were you seeing fiscally, as far as the way you were being worked, you know, early
years, like 18, etc.
So over time was off the charts, you know, and even though it got a little better in
the 2000 in the 2020 2021, well, I guess actually post COVID is when it started getting better.
In 2023, we still worked 88,000 hours of overtime.
So yeah, it got better.
And it's still pretty bad.
So the county looks at that, you know, I mean, it's hard to get a real number from them on
what that actually cost.
But 88,000 hours of overtime, that's a substantial number.
That's a substantial amount of money that's unbudgeted that you would save if you just,
if we were at minimum staffing.
And then when you look at, so we did contract negotiations, September, October, at that
time in the last year and a half, we had saw about 120, 130 firefighters leave our department.
Now I know you said it's about $15,000, but a lot of people realize too is when you're
a new hire firefighter, they have to front load into the FRS 24%.
So 24% of your salary, boom, that's gone.
That the Kent department sends off to the state, non-refundable.
On top of all your gear, you know, background checks, obviously all the training hours.
It's it is a huge financial burden to just have people come in and then to leave, you
know, a year later, two years later.
Even when you're paying for paramedic school as well, you know, you pay for them to go
to med school and then they do their year and then they're gone.
So that is what prompted the county to finally get on board with what we're going to get
into and changing our work schedule and increasing our pay.
So well, let's talk about that then.
So tell me, you know, what what were you initially working as far as the shift schedule and what
did you transition to and where are you going to be in twenty twenty six?
So when I got hired, we had no Kelly Day.
So you know, your pay periods were you had to 120 pay periods and you had a 96 hour pay
period in two thousand and nineteen.
We went to a six week Kelly Day.
So the total of twenty seven or four hours worked, you know, every year.
Other departments were at a three week Kelly Day.
So still behind them in terms of hours worked.
We never even with the six week Kelly Day, we never hit that minimum staffing.
So you're still working a lot of overtime.
What we finally agreed to in our last contract was going to a twenty four seventy two work
schedule.
Now, that's not scheduled to start until April of twenty six.
They're thinking that we can probably get it done a little earlier, maybe in January
of twenty six.
But I mean, that's that's huge.
It's a reduction of five hundred and twenty hours, you know, worked a year, you know,
working one day off three.
That's life changing.
I mean, I know we talked about it before is that first day you come off is a recovery
day that that is and that's if you have the ability to recover.
You know, a lot of us work a second and a third job.
So you might be at a station.
You just ran four or five after midnight getting off at eight to go to your next job.
Then you get home at five or six o'clock that night to take care of your family.
And then you repeat the next day.
So there really is no time off.
You know, this the twenty four seventy two was beneficial for the department and for
the county because number one, it helps recruitment and retention.
Right.
Like since we've agreed on that contract, I think we've had two resignations and those
have been career changes, not people leaving to go to other departments.
You take that and you add on top of the fact that we got an average of a twenty four percent
pay increase.
And it's like, OK, this is a huge investment that they're putting into us.
They finally realize that they're instead of just losing all this money in overtime
and people leaving, why don't we invest in our people, make life a little bit better
and be able to actually compete with the surrounding agencies?
So it's it's actually been exciting to see how many people are talking about our department
and talking about leaving their department to come work for us, which has never has never
been a thing before.
So it's exciting.
It took a lot of work and.
A lot of bloodshed, a lot of tears shed to get to this point.
But to sit here and say that we're finally here and on this twenty four seventy two schedule
that it's it's incredible.
Never in a million years, I think that Pasco County Fire Rescue would be on a twenty four
seventy two.
So but it's progressive.
And this is exciting.
This is what I've kind of threw out to the fire service this year specifically is.
And I put it this way.
We are a very courageous profession when you look operationally, you know, most of us,
you know, as a fire, you're going to make entry, you're not going to hide behind the
rig and bleed out your tank.
You know, you're going to go over the side on a rope, whatever it is, because that's
what we signed up for.
That's what we want to do.
We want to serve.
But they're really, for lack of a better word, has been a lot of cowardice when it comes
to advocating for our own health, you know, because you'll have someone who will be so
courageous in uniform.
But then you say, oh, yeah, we're thinking about this shift schedule.
Oh, that'll never happen.
They'll just beat you down.
And I was like, that's such a bitch move to just discount it.
But that's what a paradox it is.
And to be completely fair, so many of us are so damn beat down and tired that we just don't
have that fight in us.
But what's beautiful is, you know, Boynton Beach has had their chief Hugh Bruder on you
guys.
Now you're the hope.
You're the foothold of that first step again.
It's going to be like, no, this can happen.
This isn't a pipe dream.
And it never should have been even viewed that way, because what you're asking for is
a 42 hour work week, which those city and county council members work 40 hours a week
and go to their own bed every night.
So it's not a unicorn fighting rainbows.
It's just coming back down to what the rest of the world actually works.
But I think it's it's I'm so excited.
And now what we need with this momentum is everyone else to stop fighting, as you said,
going to the union, looking for money, you know, looking for that 50 cent raise and actually
understand that there's so much more value in changing the work schedule so that we give
our men and women the rest and recovery rather than a 50 cent raise that you fought tooth
and nail on a contract negotiation that lasted two years.
Right.
I mean, you know, the schedule was very difficult, like you were talking about, is that people
are going to be right.
They're going to happen.
That's impossible.
The other side of it, too, is we love going to work.
Right.
Firefighters love what we do.
That's why we do it.
You know, they love station life.
They love coming and being able to do the job.
So that was a hurdle for us was talking to our members and saying this is what's being
discussed and they didn't want it.
They didn't want it because they like coming to work.
We need people like that.
Right.
Those people need people to look out for their well-being.
And that's what our job as union leadership is to take care of them, take care of that
whole firefighter.
Right.
The firefighter, the county looks at you as just an employee.
The city looks at you as just an employee.
But you're more than that.
You're a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, brother, sister.
Right.
So if we can take care of you mentally, physically, financially, that is what is important.
We want you to live a very good, stress free, as much as possible life while you're in the
fire service.
And the ultimate goal is to live a long, happy, healthy retirement after.
So reducing this work, your work hours.
You can't put a dollar amount on it.
You know, I mean, we see it every day.
Firefighters passing away from cancer.
I mean, I was two days ago, the IFF sent out three line of duty deaths from cancer.
It's all the time.
The International Agency of Research on Cancer, IARC, is talking about making shift work a
two way carcinogen, which means that it's probably carcinogenic to humans.
So not only are the calls that we're going on killing us, our job itself is killing us.
How do we change that?
You know, this is the beginning.
The schedule is the start of hopefully a vast shift in the fire service.
So I'll kind of pose some of the push backs that I've had.
I've been talking about this for seven years now, 2472.
And this is really literally what made me start the podcast as I listened to Kurt Parsley,
Navy SEAL turned doctor, realized that sleep deprivation was basically killing his SEALs
and changed the way they train, gave them some supplementation to help them sleep and
they need to sleep, get them off ambient, et cetera, et cetera.
And I'm listening to this nine years ago, whatever it was, eight years and going, why
do we not understand this in the fire service?
I've been in exercise physiology in school.
Why do I not understand it?
I'm somewhat educated in health compared to the average person and I still hadn't heard
this before.
And so, you know, now you fast forward, you realize it's so, so, so simple, but I've been
getting the same kind of push backs.
Now one, which I think is really disgusting.
Well, a couple of things.
Firstly, can you show me the research that shows that, for example, the 56 would be worse
than a 42?
And I literally facepalm and go, you know, I can get you some research that shows you
if I kick you in the nuts, it's going to hurt.
You know, there's a certain point where you don't need fucking research.
You know what I mean?
It's just common sense.
If you need data for that, you should not be in the position that you're in.
That's number one.
Number two, and I get this from chiefs all the time.
Well, if we give these guys more time off, they're just going to work more overtime.
Firstly, who the fuck made you in charge of someone when they're on their days off?
Secondly, if you staff your department properly, there won't be the overtime for them to abuse.
So they will work on their days off, but they'll teach at the fire academy.
They'll hang drywall, the landscape.
They'll be tired from the day's work and they'll sleep in their own bed at night.
Nothing wrong with that at all if you need to make ends meet.
But that's why I said I'm going to ask you some questions and just monologue for five
minutes.
But the first one, people say we can't even hire now.
How are we supposed to get people for this extra shift?
So I mean, I obviously have responses as well, but what would your be?
What would your response be first to that?
That the fire service is still a highly sought after profession.
But people, especially since COVID in 2020, I think they value their time off.
They value their home life a lot more than what they did maybe before.
I think 2020 made you realize that what truly is important.
And you have a lot of people that can now make money at home and online.
If you change kind of, let me see, changing the schedule is a big deal, right?
Because I know that I can go to work.
I'm going to work my 24 hours.
I'm going to do my job, this very honorable profession, make decent money, great benefits
and be able to recover.
The fire service right now as a whole is pushing like the cancer, right?
I mean, no matter where you look, you see another firefighter died from cancer.
I mean, it's very public.
It's on the news all the time.
I think that's another, it deters people.
Why would you want to sign up for something that everybody is telling you is going to
kill you at some point?
Whether it's a cardiac issue or getting cancer.
Being able to recruit is really, it's hard right now.
It really is.
We have to find kind of a way to change what we're doing to hopefully get people to want
to get into this profession.
For us, recruiting I think is going to be very easy because we're going to just pull
people from other departments.
There are quite a few departments around us that they don't have any Cali Day.
They're paid pretty low and those people are going to come look for something better.
Hopefully this is a catalyst for all those other departments to start improving because
if they stay stagnant, they're going to lose a lot of their workforce.
I think this is going to fix our recruitment problem and definitely our retention problem,
but for other agencies, they got a long road ahead of them I think.
You need to address the employee and make working at that agency good.
I'm trying to think of a word I'm looking for.
What's an environment for them to thrive rather than an environment that breaks them down?
Again, this is what you get for being proactive.
You win the prize.
This is a long time coming because how many departments have pitched all your, as we say
in England, taken all your candidates that you trained up and now they're wearing a different
badge.
Well, now it turns around the other way.
I think this is it.
This is a call to action, which is why I hope where I live, Marion and Ocala, they're paying
attention because you guys are going to go to 2472.
Gainesville, Florida is about to switch to 2472.
This is happening.
The revolution has begun.
There's nothing you can fucking do to stop it now, which has made my 2024 amazing so
far.
The fact that we have a deficit, my generation, when I got hired in 03, we were testing against
thousands of people for a handful of jobs.
That's how the fire service used to be.
The job has pretty much stayed the same.
I mean, obviously the school shootings and some of these other elements have definitely
got worse and worse, but overall the job has got the same.
The only thing that's really changed is the call volume has obviously gone up, but also,
as you said, the ability to actually research the whole picture that is a career in the
fire service now gives you the whole picture.
Before when I came on and I didn't have anyone in the fire service, it was backdraft and
ladder 49 and 9-11.
That was kind of my entry to the fire service.
I didn't even realize what station life was.
I learned as I went along.
Now if I put in, say I'm going to research firefighter coat and I put firefighter C,
the next word is going to populate in Google is answer, firefighter strap.
It's going to be firefighter suicide.
This is just the reality.
Our line of duty deaths, like you said, cancer, suicide, heart disease, strokes, these are
all getting worse and worse and worse.
Add into that the diminished staffing and then the mandatory overtime.
That's a huge one.
Wait, so I work 56 and then I can't go home the next morning?
This is the reality and everyone listening, this is the world that we work in.
The only way that we're going to get people circling around and deciding they do want
to be a firefighter is we fix those things.
They stayed behind the curtain for so long, but now they're right in the middle for everyone
to see and either we change them or some departments will have firefighters and some cities will
be unprotected.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it just goes back to the whole thing.
You have to take care of your people.
Our agencies now know the dangers that we face every day and not just the dangers of
the job.
It's the unseen dangers, right?
It's the mental health part.
It's the cancer part.
It's the cardiac part.
Being able to address those issues is what's going to make people want to come work for
your agency.
Not every agency in Florida is going to work 2472s.
I know for a fact that there are going to be big departments that surround us that are
not going to go to 2472s.
At some point, they are going to get left just like Pasco was left in the 2010s.
The mental health, like you said, you type in firefighter strap and the first thing you
see is suicide.
That's another big reason why this schedule is so beneficial is helping being able to
come home and decompress and have that time off, those days off to kind of reset, get
that sleep and continue moving on and going back to shift the next day.
We're not tired.
We're not working 48s.
With this schedule, no matter where you are, no matter what department you are, you have
a 2472, you're going to have candidates.
You're going to have people apply.
They're going to come from all over the state, from all different agencies.
Overtime is probably, is definitely going to go away.
It might be a struggle in the beginning just because you've added a whole another shift,
but very soon after implementation, overtime is going to go away.
That's better for obviously our physical and our mental health.
Yeah.
It'll always be there.
They'll be infrequent over time.
I think the other thing that people understand operationally is if you have a D shift, then
we have a storm roll through like we did yesterday.
You have an entire platoon of men and women that you can call in then.
So it, and then also from what I've heard and correct me if I'm wrong, when it comes
to the Kelly days, six or three, they're a staffing nightmare and then they're usually
overtime covering those as well.
So you're eliminating a lot of the admin stress by having four consecutive shifts.
Right.
Because you don't have those vacancies.
On our six week Kelly day, we have three captains off, three drivers off and 10 firefighters
off.
Almost every single day of the week.
So if you're not at minimum staffing, you're going to be hiring, like I know C shift struggled
for a long time in our department.
They're hiring overtime every weekend just because of the Kelly day vacancies and the
PTO vacancies.
You know, getting rid of that Kelly, like you said, you're not going to have people
that are off shift unless they're on PTO.
And it doesn't leave a lot of holes to fill for overtime.
So you know, to me, this is it's kind of a no brainer.
I know a lot of people are apprehensive because it's new.
Right.
And we are going to be the largest department, at least in the state of Florida, to go to
this.
You know, we're a 700 person department.
So it's going to be it's a big project.
It's going to have, you know, some difficulties to go along the way.
And I think that was a lot of the apprehension with our membership was just because believing
that this could be implemented and that it would be successful because the six week Kelly
day really wasn't, you know, that we did not get the recruits that they thought we would
get.
We never retained like they thought we would.
So I think people are really nervous, you know, about the implementation.
But me, I think this is going to be great.
I think it's going to be easy to fill these spots.
I just I don't know.
There's no.
In my opinion, there's nothing bad that can come from having a 24 72.
Another question I get is how are we going to afford it?
How are we going to afford this?
This new group?
And a lot of times, I mean, if it's 24 48, no Kelly, obviously now you're there's always
going to be give and take.
So like Orange County, where I worked, no Kelly day.
But we got I forget now I had only five years on my left there, but I think we got 12 13
vacations day a year.
So obviously you would negotiate a handful of those away because you as you said, you'd
have a lesser work week.
You know, if you have Kelly's and you use that as a bargaining chip as well.
But with the affordability, when you understand how much overtime is being paid, the impact
of the injuries in the mental health claims, the medical retirement, the wrongful death
lawsuits when we make mistakes, there's a huge amount of money flowing out the back
end by the way that we work on men and women now.
So from a budget point of view, how are you able to send sell the fact that you were going
to have to put some money up front?
But then in the long term, there would be a huge savings down the road.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, obviously the the overtime reduction, not just in the eighty eight thousand hours
that they paid out last year, but also the fact that on a six week Kelly day, you know,
we do paycheck averaging.
So you have three hours of built in overtime in every paycheck.
Now you no longer have that.
The way that we did it was that, you know, we're going to do paycheck averaging again.
So every pay period, you're twenty two hours under that FLSA threshold to pay that time
and a half.
So that's going to save the county money right there.
If you get hired for overtime on your first overtime shift, your first twenty two hours
is going to be straight time.
You know, it's still it's at a drastically higher hourly rate.
So you're still making some pretty decent money in that first twenty two hours.
But you know, it's kind of that give and take, right?
Like what what is tolerable for our membership versus what is the county looking for?
Obviously the county wants to save money.
They are hemorrhaging in overtime and people leaving for their departments.
You know, they can't recruit.
So they're.
You have to kind of it's a collaborative effort, right?
To try and find that answer, solve, solve the problem on both sides of the table.
And that's that's where it's solved was in that overtime pay, the built in overtime and
the retention.
You know, I see all the money that's just flying out the door and say, we could pay
a little bit up front.
But long term, this is going to save us money over the next 10 years.
And that was how it got sold to our commission.
And, you know, ultimately they they agreed.
Yeah, because I mean, it's that, you know, plant the seed of a tree under which the shade
you will never know if you are the courageous leader, whether you're a fire chief or the
your administrator, understanding that what you're doing is for following generations
is a true leader.
That's courageous, selfless leadership.
The problem that we have with a lot of people, and I would argue even in some unions as well.
And I love the fact that you are one of the leaders in your unions because I don't I don't
union bash good leaders in the union.
But we have some fucking terrible people in our unions that have done nothing for years
and years and years and years and years, which I want to drag out into the into the spotlight.
So as far as that selfless leadership, you are then giving to your your department.
But if you are only concerned about how you look in that financial year, that budget year,
you're never ever going to improve.
If you're just worried about getting reelected as a union president because you're not doing
anything courageous and pushing the needle a little bit, then you're never going to make
changes.
So this is why, again, we need this courage from our firefighters to demand this.
We need our courage from our leaders in the fire service as far as actually wearing bugles
or sitting in a political position to understand that it isn't for you.
This is for them.
And if it's about you, you need to look in the mirror and ask why you're even in that
seat in the middle at all.
But this is the time for you to actually finally step up and lead.
During Covid, it was clear who the leaders were and who they were people that were in
leadership positions that had no business being there whatsoever.
Statewide, nationally, whatever it was.
And it's the same with this.
Like you're being called on to lead.
We go to firefighter funerals all the time and you have the ability to actually make
a difference in those numbers.
Do you turn your back on the men and women in uniform or do you finally stand up?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, absolutely.
You finally stand up.
You know, if you're not a piece of shit.
But you know, it's you're absolutely right.
I mean, there's there's good and bad in every profession and every I think a lot of people
when they get in leadership, no matter what side of the table it is, you forget where
you came from.
You know, we're very lucky in our department that our administration, the majority of them
did not forget where they came from.
You know, I think that our department as a whole is the poster child for collaboration.
You know, we have our union logo on our uniform shirts.
We have our union stickers on our trucks.
It just shows that administration and labor, if they're willing to, they can work hand
in hand and they can ultimately make the workplace better.
And that's what's important.
It's about taking that ego, putting it to the side and knowing that this is what's best
for the membership as a fire chief.
And as admin, this is what's best for your firefighters and being able to listen to both
sides and coming together and saying, you know, my idea might not work.
Your sounds pretty good.
Let's try it.
You don't have that.
You don't have that in every local.
You don't have that in every department.
I mean, I know there are quite a few labor leaders that, you know, look at the union
side to kind of get their foot in the door at the next level, you know, to eventually
be a part of that admin side, not doing what they can to the best of their ability because
they don't want to ruffle feathers and they don't want to, you know, ruin their chances
of one day having those bugles on their shoulders.
That's not how we do things.
You know, it's it's 100 percent.
It's for our people.
We don't care who we piss off along the way.
You know, we're going to work with our admin.
But when it comes time to burn the place to the ground, we're going to burn it to the
ground.
And, you know, we've had that in our department with our politicians.
We've had that the last few years.
So, you know, to finally see our relationships improving and getting to this point is really.
It's incredible.
It's never a million years that I think that we'd be sitting here, you know, talking about
this.
Never.
What was it that you think contributed to that relationship being successful when a
lot of other places struggle?
And obviously, ego is just is one of them.
So we'll take that out for a second.
How were you able to get to the point where you're having union stickers on uniforms and
rigs and that you're actually able to sit in a room and talk like grownups, unlike many,
many union admin conversations?
Well, a lot of that falls on our administration and.
Humility, right?
Them not looking at us like they're better than us or they don't have to worry about
our opinion or even talk to us just saying, hey, we're going to work together.
You know, we're going to take care of you guys.
You guys take care of us.
You know, there is an understanding, obviously, we're going to butt heads.
It's going to happen.
But being able to sit there and just work through it.
It was kind of just like an olive branch, you know, getting getting our logo on on our
shirts and stickers on the truck is is what it is.
Because this is just a sign of faith that we're going to work together and continue
to to work together as we go to the, you know, into the future.
And we got it in our contract.
So right.
I mean, I think it's brilliant.
And the reason why, like I've worked for four departments now and I've I've worked for,
you know, for one, I would say Anaheim.
They had probably the best relationship of all the ones that I've seen.
But I've seen, you know, other departments with I mean, they're negotiating contracts
for two years.
And I remember even as a young fighter, a younger firefighter, I remember thinking,
how the fuck can a bunch of men and women not sit in a room and make a fucking decision
to years?
Right.
That's all that's union dues, that's taxpayers money being wasted while these people are
just playing these fucking games.
Meanwhile, lives are at stake.
So this is the thing.
I love it when I hear people that are, you know, have developed that great relationship
and the union that is advocating for their people and their health and their fitness
and all these other areas.
Because if you're a union and you're opposing a fitness standard because you know that you'll
fail if you put through that, then shame on you.
If you're a union and you're dragging out negotiation because you know you get more
time off and go smooth with more people, shame on you.
You know what I mean?
Because what's so exciting is when I hear things like this, that the relationship that
you guys have created benefits the people that you serve, which is the whole point of
the union in the first place.
Right.
It's important to make sure that everything is out in the open.
You know, you don't want to hide anything from the membership because we don't want
any ideas that when we're on union leave, we're just out partying, drinking, you know,
whatever, not conducting business like we're supposed to.
So on social media, we have our internal union page and you know, we're always posting if
we're at a conference, we're at a convention, summaries of what we're doing.
You know, if we're going to a BCC or we met with certain politicians, what was discussed,
you know, negotiations is a little difficult because you don't want to say something and
then the next negotiation to go into and it's completely different.
You know, so it's kind of hard to do that.
But we had an online zoom meeting, you know, right in the middle of negotiations had over
200 members that were logged in watching and just giving them an update of this is what
we're talking about.
This is what we're going through.
And it was just an open floor discussion.
You know, if our members have questions, we provide answers.
If we don't have the answers, we also tell them that, you know, you don't feed people
a bunch of bullshit because they see right through it.
You know, it I don't know.
It's the last thing that I'm ever want to be accused of is wasting and stealing members
money in hours.
Right.
So you have to have everything out in the open.
That's what allows the members to trust you and, you know, continue pushing for what they
need as long as you're doing what's in the best interest of them.
You're never going to be wrong.
And I believe that 100 percent.
Absolutely.
One other question I want to pose to you, and I'll preface it with this.
I myself, like so many of us, believed the mythology of the fire service having the greatest
schedule in the world.
And as we've touched on before, you know, 56 and then mandatory is, I would argue, probably
one of the worst schedules actually when you lay out on paper.
But the terminology we use is one day on two days off, you know, and then you look at that
one day like, wait a second, that's 24 hours.
You know, a civilian day is nine hours with a one hour lunch.
It's an eight hour day.
We do three of those crammed together, of which the third portion of that is the second
day.
So actually, we work three days on one day off or 30 days a month, not 10 days a month.
So that's one of the fallacies that I'm trying to educate us because I mean, none of us saw
it.
We just bought in.
We jumped in with both feet.
This is the greatest profession in the world.
This is why I've been out of uniform for five years and I'm still fighting for it because
I adore it.
Another fallacy, though, that I hear with 24 72 is, oh, I'm not taking a pay cut.
Then, you know, if I'm going to lose all those hours.
So again, you know, before I put it in my two cents, what would be your response to
that?
Well, it's not a pay cut, right?
I mean, you're so we have a step plan.
So just be look at what step you're in.
That's the dollar amount that you're going to make, whether you're working 24 72 or you're
working a six week Kelly Day.
So whether you're working a 2700 and four hours a year or you're working 2184 hours
a year, that's what you're going to make on the 24 72.
Your time is more valuable.
Your PTO is more valuable.
You know, there it on top of the fact that we got raises to go along with it.
But even if we didn't, once again, your time is more valuable, right?
You're not losing any money.
So it's really it's just a it's a fallacy, right?
Like it's just something that people say to try and get others not to vote.
Yes.
You know, for some reason in their mind, no, we're losing money.
There's no way that we're going to work less and they're going to pay us the same or no
way we're going to work less and pay them more.
It's like, well, they are.
So believe it.
That's what you're fighting for.
That's why I tell people, I give you a scenario.
You get told you go into training.
That's a 40 hour week.
Are you going to expect a 16 hour pay cut?
No, because you know that your salary is your salary.
It's the same thing.
It's just that they you know, they and I'm making they like there's some demon out there.
But you know, the way that we have allowed our core load and profession to evolve and
amplify, but yet our working conditions to stay the same, we found ourselves so woefully
overworked and underpaid that all you're doing is putting it back to where it should have
been a long time ago.
We should have been on.
And it is the irony as well.
Everyone adores FDNY.
They work I think it's 40 hours, 40 or 42.
And it's like it used to be like a I think a 10 and 15 sorry, 10 to 14 or something like
that.
But most of them put them together.
So I think it ends up being roughly a 24 72.
So the very profession, the very department that we all admire and honor, you know, multiple
times a year and go to seminars run by their firefighters.
When does anyone say, well, why don't we do the same shift as them to?
Oh, no, no, that would never happen.
The site will choose one.
Do you either admire this department or you don't?
But they, you know, they're doing purely the fire on the fire side.
And we're doing fire and EMS and working 16 hours a week more than FDNY.
So this is the thing.
You start peeling the onion and you realize and it wasn't malicious.
It's just that because we didn't evolve, we are doing 20, 23 fire slash EMS with 1903
work weeks.
And we have to understand that we've got to evolve.
Right.
That was, you know, we use Boston as an example.
Right.
So Boston Fire has a D shift.
Now they don't do a 24 72.
They'll do, I want to say it's a 24 48 24 96.
But it's still the same 42 hour work week that we're going to as a 24 72.
You know, it's looking at these large departments all across the nation, you know, Seattle,
that have the schedule already.
And that was a difficulty for us was a lot of our membership was, well, give us an example
of who has the schedule.
Oh, well, Boston Fire, Seattle, you know, no, no, no.
In Florida.
Okay.
Boyton Beach, Boca.
Well, those are small departments.
It's like, yes, that doesn't mean that it can't work here.
Yeah.
They had to hire less people than we're going to.
But our department, we're not going to have to onboard that many.
I want to say the numbers is somewhere in the 80s because of the six week Kelly Day,
we had floating firefighters, floating drivers and floating captains to offset those vacancies
cause because that was the county's way to help offset overtime, which obviously didn't
work.
But you're going to be able to take those.
You're going to be able to take those floaters and move them over to D shift.
And you're not going to have to hire that many people.
I mean, 88 people, the moment that this opened up, there are 200, 300 applicants to come
work for our department.
I mean, you're going to fill those spots.
You could fill them tomorrow if you wanted to.
So it really, I mean, and I understand it, right?
Because a lot of people were so used to getting stepped on, right?
By our departments, by the county or city that we work for, you know, no, they're never
going to take care of us.
They don't care about us.
So if they're doing this, there has to be some reason, right?
They have to have, there's some plot that they have to go to 24 72.
It's like, or it's just simply for their end.
It's financially motivated, which, you know, at the end of the day, that's their job, right?
They have to worry about how they're spending taxpayer money.
So as if they're financially motivated, I could care less as long as we're getting this
right on the schedule and they're going to take care of our members and you know, if
this works, if this saves taxpayer money by reducing overtime and increasing retention,
it's also going to help us and make our lives better.
So it's a win for both sides.
But you know, getting out of the, well, we work 24 on 48 off.
That's the fire service.
That's the tradition or a three week Kelly day was what we were hearing a lot of, you
know, you have to change that mindset and, you know, kind of convince them to, Hey, this
is, this is the right way to go.
You know?
Yeah.
I've had conversations even with the, with the leather helmet.
Oh, that's tradition.
And it's, you know, I know it's the symbol of the, you know, salty firefighter.
I did it for 14 years.
I loved it, but that's not tradition.
That's a hat.
Tradition is camaraderie and courage and service.
Those are the traditions of the fire service, not the days that you come in and the days
that you don't.
And we get that very muddled.
You know, if something is getting in the way of progress, then proudly put it on your office
wall and sits a piece of fire service history, but that's not tradition.
Traditions are principles and philosophies, not items and shift schedules.
Right.
Absolutely.
But it's hard to convince people otherwise.
Right.
I mean, it's just, I can't tell you how many conversations I had when we were going to
these negotiations, you know, trying to just answer the, answer their questions and just
like, no, listen, there, there isn't a boogeyman hiding in the closet, you know, with, with
this deal.
This is straightforward.
This is why it's going to be beneficial to you.
But it goes back to what I was saying earlier about, we have some bad-ass men and women
that work for our agency that they don't want more time off than other places.
They want to work the same schedule.
They want to make close to as the same amount of money.
You know, they're in the, they weren't looking for much.
They're just looking for a small improvement, you know, to be able to take this to them.
Also knowing that this was a collaboration between the county and admin in our side,
you know, the 24 72 actually was brought up by the county when it came to our negotiations.
We were going there.
Our members wanted a three week Kelly day and a race.
That was what we were pushing.
The county looked at it as if we gave you a three week Kelly day, it's going to do nothing
for us in terms of overtime reduction and retention increase because we're not going
to be able to pay you dollar for dollar what Hillsborough County, Tampa, St. Pete make.
We're just not, we're going to continue to lose people to those departments.
So this is what we think that we can do to make your lives better and also make our life
better.
It, you know, I agree in it, but it was hard to convince people because like you're saying
it it's tradition.
You know, if we want to go down that route, right, I hate to say it, but cancer is tradition.
Suicides tradition, cardiac issues are tradition, right?
Maybe we should change.
That's a beautiful point.
It really is another, another area.
Well, a couple of things.
Firstly, some of the people that want to stay at work is for the wrong reasons.
And I realized, you know, we talk about unhealthy COVID mechanisms, the alcohol and you know,
extramarital affairs and stuff.
Another one is work.
Another one is overtime.
We all know that overtime whore, but it makes no sense to not want to go home, not to want
to go and do the things that you want to do, spend time with your family.
So some of those, I would argue maybe need to look in the mirror and go, why is it that
I'm wanting to work more?
Am I avoiding something rather than genuinely just wanting to be at the station more?
The other thing is, you know, you hear a lot of chest beating and oh, it's for them.
What we do is for them.
Well, firstly, them primarily should be your loved ones before the fire service.
Like if you abandon your family because you're an Uber firefighter, then I think you've kind
of missed the point personally.
But secondly, if you're talking about performance, I've had so many guests from all the military
branches, the Navy SEALs, sporting, everything.
None of your favorite athletes are sleep deprived.
So if you actually want to eke out a higher level of performance as a firefighter, you
need more rest and recovery because I can promise you, if you've done any more than
a handful of years, you are only a fraction of the firefighter you could be.
It's just physiology.
You cannot be better.
You cannot be as sharp mentally.
You can't be as physically fit if you're not getting the rest and recovery.
Otherwise our athletes would be chain smokers that never slept and drank coffee and bourbon
all day.
You know what I mean?
That's not the case.
Even with that one, more time off will make you a better firefighter, make you a better
paramedic, make you a better driver, engineer, whatever your role is.
So that kind of trumps that as well.
You're buying into a myth that you're going to be so good if you work the same.
You're not.
It's a miracle that any of us are even able to function with some of the work schedules
that are out there.
So that was beat my other things.
If it's truly for them, firstly, them should be your family, which is you advocating for
more time off.
Secondly, if you're talking about your community, rest and recovery is imperative to be the
tactical athlete and the critical thinker that you need to be in uniform.
Absolutely.
It's for them.
So let's make sure that we're not making mistakes at three o'clock in the morning on the back
end of a 48 when it's truly life or death in the back of that rescue.
It is for them.
But like you said, family has to come first.
If your home life is not right, your work life probably isn't going to be either.
I went through divorce.
I'm sure, what is it?
Over 50% of firefighters get divorced.
Why is that?
You can't tell me that our work schedule doesn't contribute to it, that our work life doesn't
contribute to it.
It absolutely does.
Being able to spend more time at home, making sure that home life is healthy, our minds
are healthy, physically we're healthy.
This all comes back to what we've been talking about is our work schedule, overworked and
underpaid.
It causes a lot of stress.
Now you're working two, three other jobs.
I was just up in Canada, in Ottawa for a Health Canada Summit in October.
There was a gentleman there that put on a presentation about obesity in the fire service.
They had a little roundtable discussion after and I stood up like, I got something to say.
We say 66% of firefighters are obese in the fire service.
How many of them work a second and third job?
I guarantee it's higher.
You want healthier and more fit firefighters?
You take care of them financially, physically and mentally.
You pay them right.
You give them more time off.
You're going to have a healthier firefighter.
It's just going to happen.
I don't know.
It is so important.
I can't emphasize it.
I can't wait for 2026 to come.
I have a countdown on my phone for when this schedule starts.
It's just, I don't know.
It's going to be a game changer for my life, for my family, for everyone in our department,
their family.
I'm excited.
I really am.
It's going to be life changing.
That makes me smile the fact that you said that because I've talked about this before.
It breaks my heart when I see a firefighter with a countdown on his app.
I'm not talking about months and weeks, but years until they retire.
You know what I mean?
How amazing that you have a countdown to getting to a work week that will actually give you
more rest and recovery and time with your family.
I think that's a countdown that's worthy.
Yes, it absolutely is.
I don't know.
I'm excited.
I really want, I'm more excited too to see the response.
For once we start and it works to see all these other agencies start going that route.
It's going to be awesome to be a part of, we're going to be the trendsetter for this
big agency to do this.
Obviously Boyan and Boca, they did it before us.
For an agency of our size to transition, especially from a six week Kelly Day to a 2472, it's
going to be incredible to see all the other departments and locals react.
Now, did you say Seattle went to 2472 as well?
Yes.
Brilliant.
I hear a lot from the West Coast is, oh, I can't wait, we're going to a 4896 and I'm
just like, oh my God.
I mean, that's just out of the frying pan into the fire.
I always talk about this, we always talk about the shifts like a Rubik's cube and we spin
the cube and change the colors.
It's like, when are we going to talk about making the cube smaller?
To me, the 4896 is just spinning colors and arguably making it worse because you look
at the damage of 24 without sleep, a 48 is insanity.
An Anaheim where I used to work, much as I love them, I think they moved their allowance
from mandatory to 120 hours straight.
I mean, just fucking insane.
That really makes me smile.
The one on the West Coast departments are starting to get it too.
I can't believe they allow someone to work 120 hours in a row.
That's mind blowing.
Our department, at least the best part about when I got hired is they couldn't hit you
for more than a 24.
You could not work more than 48 hours in a row without a 12 hour rest period in between.
I know there are departments that allow 72 hours straight.
That's insane.
We're killing ourselves.
Yeah, I'm sure the money's nice, but you're killing yourself working that kind of schedule,
working that amount of hours.
You're always on.
I don't know about you, how you were when you were at work, but even when I'm at a station
that is slower, high likelihood you're going to sleep all night.
I'm still up to one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning.
It's hard to shut your brain off when you're at work, no matter if you're running calls
or not.
Even if you are getting to sleep, what's the quality of it?
I promise I sleep a lot better in my bed at home than I do at the bed at work.
So the 48.96 is, I agree with you 100%.
I don't think that that should not be an answer at all.
I think it's only going to make the problems worse.
And I don't know, 24 72.
That's the way to go.
Yeah.
And again, that's what I was telling Pat Kenny yesterday.
I think it was, it boils down to why do you think you're not worthy to work a 40 hour
for 42?
Why is it so out the question that you can't even go to the table and present that?
And you know, I would, there's no, there's no answer.
Why should the person that's going to wake from a dead sleep at three in the morning
jump in the back of a tiller, drive to a fire, throw a ladder, make entry, go search for
a kid and then maybe even have to come out and do a pediatric algorithm after that, that
you're fine with them working 56, but the person pushing papers works 40.
Why is it so hard for you to understand that you fucking deserve to have the work we these
people have arguably even less, but at least let's get it back to what they were.
I think, I think a lot of that boils down to, you know, it's, it's a blue collar job.
And I think that has a lot to do with it.
That the men and women that are in the fire service, all they know is work, right?
That's that we're hardworking and hard headed.
So anything that is going to kind of take away from what we're proud of, you know, our
job, our careers taken away from that, I think is why there is so much fight about working
less.
I really do.
And I think that also might be a problem, right?
I think I identify as Dixon.
I don't identify as a firefighter.
Firefighting is my career.
I'm very passionate about it.
I'm very passionate about the union side and making lives for our members better.
But that is not who I am.
And I think that's another big problem in the fire services.
Our men and women identify as their job.
The job could care less.
It really is the, your department could care less about you.
You know, you need to take care of you, do what's the best interest for you and your
family and working less and making the same amount of money.
Nobody can tell me that that is a bad thing or prove that it's a bad thing.
Absolutely.
Well, I mean, even when we talk about obesity, we talk about cancer, which I want to get
into quickly before we wrap up.
You know, I've been to conferences and like, oh, we're going to talk about decon and we're
going to talk about PFAS.
There's never a conversation about sleep deprivation, which as you touched on a minute ago has been
the World Health Organization and other governing bodies have identified it as a carcinogen for
humans.
And then when you talk about the mental health conversation, oh, it's what Dixon saw, you
know, well, no one's ever talking about firstly, your formative years.
And in your case, the head trauma from playing football, those are also going to factor in,
but the sleep deprivation too, you know, and again, that doesn't get so changing these
shifts will absolutely hands down, categorically move the needle on the mental health issues
we have on the diseases that we have.
And I just learned a guy I know locally here has got stage four cancer, a young guy.
So it's all the things.
And I always tell people, you know, we don't die of one thing.
We die of everything.
You know, it's just whatever's going to get you first.
And there's my last department, really, Creek, they hardly ever run fires.
It's Disney.
They're protecting Disney.
So it's so well sprinkled and kudos to the prevention side for that.
But they're dropping like flies too.
They don't see carcinogens very much.
They had an asbestos fire once.
I know it wasn't very nice for some of the older guys, but, but they run their ass off.
They run on all day and they run all night.
So again, it's the sleep deprivation.
It's not the carcinogens in that case.
So this is, you know, why the whole conversation, it will fix everything by putting it back.
But while we're on the cancer topic, I had the two guys from Sweden, the healthy firefighter
guys on the show quite a long time ago now.
And it was awesome hearing the kind of origin of the kind of clique clean cab philosophy
that got again, some people pushing against, you know, clean cabs, stop grabs, I think
is again, a fucking ridiculous thing to say.
Because if you're leaping off a fire engine right into the burning building, maybe you're
missing some steps, but you know, it's not making it into a, you know, a surgery and
operating table.
It's just understanding that some of the gear that we wore that's off gassing might not
be good to lie against and inhale.
So talk to me about the neat decon side in Pasco and some of the progressive stuff you've
been doing there.
Yeah, so in 2020, we actually started a decon program in Pasco County.
So our decon program today, we have two trucks that are fully staffed 24 hours, 365 days
a year with two firefighters on each truck.
One covers the west side of the county, one covers the east side of the county.
Those trucks are basically like rolling closets, right?
And the back of them, one of them is just like, it's just a box truck.
The other one is like a 38 foot E1 that has washers and everything on it.
So on every confirmed structure fire, either decon one or decon two is dispatched on that
call.
So when you come out of that fire, you have a fresh set of gear sitting there waiting
for you.
You doff all your gears, first you get sprayed down, so we get 99% of those carcinogens off
at the first engine, sets up a little green line water hose, sprays them down.
You go over to the decon truck, you get brand new set of gear, brand new Nomex wipes to
wipe down your head, neck areas.
And the decon truck takes that gear back to their station, they wash it, they have it
back to you within a shift or two.
It was very difficult in the beginning to kind of get people to buy in, right?
Because everyone knows like our gear is like our skin, you know, it's what's protecting
us when we're inside that structure.
A lot of people don't want others touching their gear.
I'm responsible for it.
That's what's going to protect me and save me.
I don't want anybody messing with that.
So it was very hard in the beginning stages to kind of get that buy in.
We had a member of our department, Jason Tucker, who passed away in April of this past year
from glioblastoma.
One of our founding members of our special operations program, one of the most senior
firefighters in our department, I mean, Jason was a firefighter's firefighter.
When he was going through that treatment, he was the biggest supporter of the decon
program.
What he did in that year that he was on light duty and fighting that cancer was instrumental
in the success, you know, being able to see this guy, the senior man in our department
fighting this terrible disease.
And he's going around telling you like, you have to decon, you have to buy into this,
you have to change your gear, the dirty helmet, the dirty gear, that's not a badge of honor,
it's stupidity.
And then he was actually at our training center on light duty and every new hire class that
come in, he would have an hour with them and just talk to them about his journey and how
important it is to get clean gear and make sure that you're taking care of yourself.
And the numbers from 2020 to today of participation, it's a 180.
You go on a fire, everybody that makes entry in that fire, they're required by policy now
to come out and swap their gear.
You know, it's something, once again, never thought that Pasco County would have something
like this because it is a large, you know, financial like burden on our department between
all the gear they have to buy the staffing of these trucks, obviously buying the trucks
itself, I mean, it's a huge investment that the county made into us.
And you know, the other side of it is right now we have fire decks gear, which is the
has the lowest number amount of PFAS on the market when it comes to fire, you know, to
structural firefighting gear.
So trying to prevent or trying to reduce our exposures in the schedule and get us out of
that dirty gear and into clean gear as soon as you walk out that structure, it's two sides,
you know, to combating this cancer issue that is in the fire service.
I mean, I think it's just such an important conversation.
And again, it's about ego.
And like I've said this a lot, and I'm sure I piss people off and I really don't fucking
care if you're more concerned about how you look and you want that filthy helmet.
I mean, again, the leather, we all know that leather is completely porous.
And it absorbs you cannot decontaminate a leather helmet.
You can't decontaminate a leather radio strap.
So if all you're going to do is EMS, then maybe okay.
But I know many, many times I had, you know, a strap was in a fire and then, you know,
you wipe it down with a wipe and now you're on the EMS call and it's right against your
throat.
But it's all in there.
You haven't got rid of anything.
So a real kind of eye opener for me was when I worked for Anaheim being a tillerman, you
can't have your pack in the doghouse.
It's got to be in a compartment beneath you.
So you gear up and they and kudos Anaheim, we had two sets of gear.
So you were able to swap.
It wasn't a rig, but you go back to the station, you switch out, you shower up, switch out
and then you bag it up and you send it off.
But the ability to climb down and literally it takes eight seconds to pull a pack out
of a compartment and throw it on your back.
Meantime, like me, if you're just a firefighter, you're listening to your LT or your captain
tell you what they want you to do.
If you're an officer, you're looking at the structure, you're making decisions.
If you're an engineer, you're probably not packing up yet anyway, but you have time to
put this gear on before you go in.
So I am totally for the packs not being in the rig too, because they are absorbing everything.
They're off gassing.
So now you've got clean gear.
You've got a pack in a different compartment that takes a moment to throw on.
And now you can have a normal seat where the pack doesn't dig in your back, you know, and
you can actually buckle in properly.
So you're wearing your seatbelt all the way to the fire.
It's safe on so many different levels.
And it's just about ego.
If you want to come off that rig, you know, with your leather helmet and your fucking
pack still smoking from the last fire because you want to make sure the Orlando Sentinel
takes a picture of your fucking heroic ass, then is that for them?
No, it's for you.
It's narcissism.
So again, we have to put our egos away and our fucking fairy tales and go.
How many people have we lost to cancer?
How would they feel in their graves that we're doing the same fucking thing that killed them?
We owe it to them and their memories, whether we've lost them to, you know, the heart issues
or cancer or the mental health side to advocate for change so that when we think of their
name, when you guys think of Jason, you know that he fought for change.
So other people wouldn't have to endure what he did.
And that is a fucking heroic firefighter right there.
And I hope a lot of people listening can listen to his example and change the way they think.
Absolutely.
And, you know, it takes.
It takes a senior man.
I think to create change, right?
Like you have to have somebody that's well respected to get by in.
And, you know, firefighters were inherently rule breakers.
So no policy that your department puts out is probably going to change anything.
You know, it needs to be our administration and union leadership work together to make
sure that this DECOM program was a success, to make sure that people bought in, you know,
having Jason going around and talking about this program is what caused people to buy
in.
And I think that's a lesson that not only firefighters can learn, but also administration
can learn.
Like ruling with an iron fist gets nothing done.
It just gets people written up.
That's it.
But if you actually want change, if you want people, their lives to improve, their health
to improve, it's a collaborative effort.
It is both sides working together to make your department, to make your agency a better
place to work.
That is the ultimate goal that that should be the ultimate goal.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to be mindful of your time before we wrap up.
Are there any other areas that you want to make sure that we, you know, impart to the
audience before I let you go?
No, I mean, I think I think we hit most of the stuff that I had written down.
So just I want to see everyone.
Everyone needs to get to that 24 72.
I don't care how it has to happen.
You have to get there.
You have to do what's best for your people and just get it done.
Absolutely.
Well, mate, I want to be again, I want to thank you so much for not just coming on,
but I mean, as you said, you had preparation, but most importantly, to everyone that was
involved in this proactive movement that you've seen in your department, I think, you know,
from the council members all the way through to the the firefighters, it's admirable, you
know, and obviously not everyone was in, but there was as much there was enough buy in
that they were able to kind of move it forward and hopefully educate the others that were
resisting and then they started coming on board to.
But you you're at the tip of the spear.
You are the beginning of this paradigm shift.
And I'm so excited firstly for you, because I know this will be life changing for you
and your families.
And it's going to help in every every area, it's going to drive people back into your
department.
It's going to provide a much higher level of service to your people, your community,
but also your your leading the charge now for the American Fire Service.
And you know, now that this wave has started to take up some momentum, I hope that it does
sweep across the country, because as I mentioned earlier, I think that every man and woman
in uniform doing the job that I adore deserves the environment that allows them to thrive,
have a healthy career and then a healthy retirement.
So I want to thank you so much for being so generous with your time today and coming on
the Behind the Shield podcast.
Thank you very much for having me as a great conversation.
And for anybody out there listening that needs or wants any information on the 24 72, you
know, I'm always available.
And where can people I've didn't even ask you that.
Where can people find you?
So I'm on Instagram.
PhilipsDixon underscore is my handle or you can send me an email at D P H I L L I P S
at IAFF local 44 20 dot org.