Work without wages: the motivation for volunteer firefighters

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, July, 1993 by Alexander M. Thompson, III, Barbara A. Bono

As empowering as these emergency interventions are, the day-to-day control exercised by volunteer firefighters over their own work possibly provides an even more forceful means for combatting alienation.(7) Superficially, the control apparatus of volunteer fire departments resembles a capitalist firm, with well-defined operational hierarchies (chief and subordinate line officers) and administrative hierarchies (president and subordinate "social" officers). Nevertheless, this appearance masks an underlying apparatus of radical, participatory democracy which affords the rank and file substantial control over the organization's operations (Jacobs 1976, 199-200). Line and social officers are elected annually by the full active membership. Thus, these officers are fully accountable to the members who have entrusted certain responsibilities to their stewardship. Typically, line officers work their way up through the ranks only after spending substantial time as regular volunteers, and generally return to this status following their tours as officers.

To be sure, one delegated responsibility is the unquestioned authority of the chief at an emergency scene, but even this assignment is renewed only insofar as rank and file volunteers deem the chief worthy of this trusteeship. In addition to the annual election, officers are routinely called upon to account for their actions during monthly departmental meetings. Moreover, all matters of departmental concern are brought before these meetings and resolved through open discussion and ballot. Thus, many of the conditions deemed necessary for a functioning participatory democracy are present within the volunteer fire service (Rothschild-Whitt 1979; Blumberg 1975).

What is revealed within volunteer fire departments, then, is essentially a fundamental inversion of the capitalist relationship between workers and their putative "bosses." Here, the latter essentially work for the former, who collectively retain control over the organization, and thereby actively participate in and control an activity from which they are likely to be less alienated. A more appropriate model for these production relationships is the participatory democracy elucidated by Albert and Hahnel (1991). Relations of production within volunteer fire departments more closely resemble those found in worker cooperatives than those found in capitalist enterprise.

In the survey, over 90% of volunteer firefighters indicated that they were highly or moderately motivated by "being in control of what we do and how we do it," as indicated in Table 4. Only 4% indicated that control played no role in their motivation. It is possible to overstate the degree of control exercised by volunteer firefighters, since most fire companies are ultimately under the governance of a board of commissioners elected at large from the community. Commissioners are responsible for the fire company budgets, purchasing means of production (firefighting, medical and other emergency apparatus), and raising tax revenues required to fund these purchases. Commissioners do not generally interfere in the day-to-day operations of the fire company, however.