Today I write about a topic I’m interested on a personal level, although is not closely related to entrepreneurship, but rather with businesses in general. It’s the adoption of the Law 20.907 recently published in the Official Journal on April 14, witch refers to a change in the Labor Law that allows dependent workers who are also volunteer firefighters to make abandonment of the workplace to attend emergencies.

The modification was made by the inclusion of a new article that we reproduce entirely (translated):

Art 66 ter.- The dependent workers governed by the labor code and those governed for the Administrative Statute for Municipal Officials content on the Law Nº 18.883, who additionally are volunteers of the firefighters will be empowered to go to accidents, fires or other claims that could happen in the working hours.

The time workers spend in the emergency will be considered as work for all legal purposes. The employer may not, under any circumstances, rate this absence as unseasonable and unjustified to configure the cause of abandonment of work established in the article 160 number 4 letter a) of this code, or as a reason for a summary investigation or a administrative summary in each case.

The employer can request to the respective Fire Department Command accreditation of the circumstances stipulated in this article.

Although I agree with the intention of the standard: to prevent a worker to be fired, even under justified legal causes, when he have been assisting his fire department, in the rescue of lives or goods from third parties. It seems to me that the content of the standard is insufficient since it does not fully captures the reality of firefighting work and can be used for abuses of some workers.

All volunteer firefighters in Chile when assuming the service commitment with their respective companies, acquires a series of obligations. One of those obligations is the assistance for the service provided. For volunteer firefighting to subsist over time, the participation of its members in the emergencies is required.

However, this duty of assistance, while differs from Station to Station and from Department to Department, in general requires participation of each firefighter only to mandatory acts, as emergencies like Large Fires and others that are not emergencies such as the Solemn Sessions, Exercises, Academies, Funerals. In more detail, what is required from volunteers usually is to comply with attendance at a percentage of these obligatory acts (50% plus 1 in my Department).

An average company can easily take more than 2 daily acts, including traffic accidents, gas leaks, rescues, non-propagated fires, chemical emergencies, etc. from witch at least 50% could occur during the working hours. However, from all these acts only a small percentage will be mandatory.

The rule distinguishes none of these concepts, so an abusive worker could make abandonment of the workplace up to 10 times or more during the working week under the justification of attending an emergency, being protected by the standard. We must consider that a simple emergency will last between 30 minutes and 1 hour, but a complex emergency can take from 2 to 24 hours or more. This without taking in account the transfer times from the workplace to the site of the emergency.

I think that the damage that will cause to firefighters who will be discriminated against because of their status when confronting an application processes for a job, is inevitable. No matter how valuable the contribution of volunteers is in the assistance of third parties and the country in general, this is not a part of their actual job, so it cannot impose to the employer the burden of paying a salary for it. Unless the employer and the employee reach a mutual understanding on the matter committing the worker to a maximum of hours worked in the service and the employer to pay for it as a contribution from the company to the firefighting mission.

Some other questions that article 66 ter do not respond: What about the case of delays when entering the workplace on the occasion of attending an emergency? Would the norm apply? What is the treatment for the differences generated between the time of the emergency reported by the Fire Department Command and the actual time of absence? What if the volunteer is a member of a Department (ex.) Santiago, but works in (ex.) Valparaiso and attends to emergencies in that jurisdiction?

Hopefully the volunteer members of the Fire Brigades in Chile act in good faith in accordance with the intent of the rule and employers have sufficient tolerance to reach understandings with their workers. Meanwhile many volunteers are taking out of their resume a condition that recently was making them proud when facing a job application process.

Santiago Henríquez C., Lawyer and Volunteer Firefighter

Picture: Skeeze (CC0)