Portland Firefighters and the Fight for the Two Platoon System

PHOTO: Deering High School on Stevens Avenue in Portland burned on May 21, 1921.

In 1918, the Portland firefighters quietly formed International Association of Firefighters Local 133, the first firemen’s union in the state of Maine. It had been a long time coming for the firemen who had lost several brothers over the years protecting the residents from numerous fires that swept through the city in those days.

William JHawkins, 42, who worked out on Ladder 5 out of the Central Station on Congress Street, was Local 133’s first president. Born and raised in Portland, Bill Hawkins, had always wanted to be a firefighter since he was boy. He started at the Portland Fire Department as a substitute with Engine 5 and became a permanent member in 1906. He and his wife Florence lived in a duplex on Laurel Street with their five children. He once said his favorite pastime was to get behind the wheel of his car and take the family for a drive out in the country.

Local 133 Vice President was Joseph L. Blake, who worked on Engine 3 out of the Brackett Street Station. Ladder 3 carried 209 feet of ladders, two 35-gallon chemical tanks, and 500 feet of chemical hose. The engine had a first class Amoskeag steamer capable of pumping 750 gallons of water per minute. Blake lived with his wife Frances and their 13-year old daughter Florence at Joy Place.

Union Recording Secretary William E. Fuller also worked on Ladder 3 out of the Brackett Street station. Fuller had been steamfitter until 1915, when he joined the Portland Fire Department. He was known as a “fearless firefighter with an exceptionally fine record." He would be promoted to the rank of Lieutenant a year later and Captain a year after that. Fuller was elected as the first President of the Maine Firemen’s Association in 1927.

Then there was Financial Secretary John J. Gubbins, who almost died after responding to the deadly toxic chemical spill at H.H. Hay Sons drug store on New Years Day, five year earlier in 1913. Gubbins was a hard case and the trauma of his experiences on the job would eventually consume him.

As we covered in previous stories, Maine firefighters had been organizing and striking sporadically for decades prior to the formation of the first union in the state. The Portland firefighters had made some gains over the previous twenty years, including a reduction of hours from one day off every fifteen days to one day off every eight days in 1909. The same year, the Maine Legislature passed a law that allowed the city to establish a pension for firemen. In 1917, they were finally granted two weeks of vacation per year. But the major reason why the Portland firefighters organized in 1918 was to fight for a second shift.

In those days, nearly all paid professional firefighters worked in what was known as the continuous duty system. They practically lived at the fire house because there were no shifts. According to the New England Museum of Firefighters, 95 percent of career fire fighters worked under the continuous duty system, which meant they were on duty 120 hours a week with 48 hours off. They had one day off every several days with a few hours to go home each day for meals. This was at a time when the average worker worked about 60 hours per week.

“The continuous duty system made firefighting an undesirable job to many men who wanted to spend time with their family or do something besides living in a barn 90 percent or more of their time,” the museum writes. “Often fatigue and lack of sleep were real problems for firefighters in many large and busy fire departments that had a continuous duty system.”

It cited a 1913 New York Fire Department study that found fatigue was a factor in numerous accidents, including several fatal ones, which it attributed to the continuous duty schedule. Firefighters also had to “fight boredom” back then because they did not provide emergency medical services. There were also far fewer fire alarm activations and non-fire alarms, so most fire companies in major cities had less than 500 alarms per year. These days, the Portland Fire Department responds to about 20,000 calls a year, including 13,000 medical emergencies.

In the 1910s, firefighters and progressive reformers began advocating for cities to adopt the “two platoon system,” which divided a fire company into two 84-hour shifts. This allowed half the department to have time off while the other half was on duty. By 1918, fifteen US cities had adopted the two-platoon system. Bridgeport, Connecticut was the first city in New England to create two shifts. The same year, delegates from 24 firefighter unions convened in Washington to form the International Association of Firefighters. By the end of the year, 149 locals, including Portland’s Local 133, had joined the IAFF.

Firefighters began forming unions in the mid-19th century as benevolent associations to assist their brothers injured on the job and support families of those killed in the line of duty. Some of them independently affiliated with the American Federation of Labor after it was established in 1886. Pittsburgh firefighters organized AFL Local 11431 after the newly elected city government threatened to fire firemen who did not support the new administration. When city leaders fired the union’s first president Captain Frank G. Jones, the union paid his lost wages and fought to have him reinstated. After he was finally reinstated as a lieutenant, he submitted a resolution to the AFL for fire fighters to be able to organize locals across the country. This laid the foundation for the formation of the IAFF with the Pittsburgh firefighters as its first local, IAFF Local 1.

However, not long after the IAFF organized, unions, especially those in the public sector, became public enemy number one in the eyes of many municipal leaders. Following the end of World War I, there was a massive strike wave involving four million American workers across industries. On September 9, 1919 Boston police went on strike for union recognition and improvements to their wages and working conditions. Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge sent the National Guard to violently put down the strike, shooting down and killing eight civilians. The mainstream press accused the policemen of being Bolshevik “agents of Lenin,” a charge leveled against the entire labor movement.

IAFF President Fred W. Baer urged members not to participate if a nationwide strike was called in reaction to anti-strike legislation in Congress. However, the anti-union climate was so strong that several city governments forced IAFF locals to give up their charters in exchange for pay raises. Perhaps that is why IAFF Local 133 kept such a low profile in the early years of its brief existence. But eventually they would be outed by the anti-labor press and real estate interests when they attempted to pass an ordinance to create the first two-platoon system in Maine. Tune in next week for "The 25 Year Fight for the Two Platoon System."