President's Message
More Than a Union
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| CPF President Lou Paulson |
As firefighters, we all feel part of something larger than ourselves … a collective sense of duty to each other, our profession and the public. That larger sense of purpose and connection is the glue that binds us in good times and in bad. It is at the heart of our mission at California Professional Firefighters.
CPF was founded on the bedrock of the firefighter labor movement. Our founding purpose is to improve the lives of fire service professionals and their families, by helping them win better salaries, benefits and working conditions.
In Sacramento, the cornerstone of that commitment has been our tenacious (and highly successful) legislative and political action team. At the Capitol, CPF has had a hand in every significant innovation in California benefitting the lives and families of the men and women on the front lines, from the nation's first firefighter cancer presumption law to the Firefighters Bill of Rights.
At the ballot box, our bipartisan, issue-based approach to political action has allowed CPF to build a level of trust and impact rivaling that of organizations whose campaign bankrolls dwarf ours.
But just as we view firefighting as more than just a job, CPF's vision of service to firefighters extends beyond the bottom line to the front lines. As we have stated on more than one occasion, CPF is "more than a union."
• Honoring our fallen. The California Firefighters Memorial - build and maintained by CPF's non-profit California Fire Foundation - honors all firefighters who fall in California ... local, state and federal. The Foundation also supports local firefighters when their members fall.
• Training our future. CPF co-founded the California Fire Fighter Joint Apprenticeship Committee (CFFJAC), a foundation of labor-management partnership that has brought innovation and, more importantly, critical funding to firefighter training in California.
• Sending your message. The newspaper you hold in your hands was printed by our Firefighters Print and Design. Our successful CPF Firevision podcast is produced by our FireStar Productions. And the close collaboration between your local leadership and our communications and political action teams helps insure that firefighters are heard on statewide issues that matter to them at the state and local level.
• Protecting your health. CPF created Personal Exposure Reporting to insure that firefighters are able to document the toxic exposures that are proven to shorten their lives.
• Supporting your local. When your local leadership needs support - whether it's with advice on image building, consultation on political contests or background and research on health, safety, workers' comp or survivor benefits, CPF is a go-to resource.
This larger vision of California's firefighting profession has always been a part of CPF's DNA. In these times, that vision is more important than ever.
At every level of government - federal, state and local - the very concept of public service is under attack. As we have seen throughout the nation and here in California, the haters no longer discriminate between professions - all of us are painted with the same broad brush.
Next year, we expect to find ourselves facing not only a renewed fight over pensions, but yet another attempt to pass an initiative to silence your voice in political action. These proposals and others like them are built to scapegoat people like you and I while protecting the Wall Street predators who continue to profit from our current economic crisis.
When facing battles like these, we can't afford the luxury of believing that it's all about "someone else." It's about us ... all of us. If we're going to win - locally, in Sacramento or even at the national level - we need to work ever-harder to cement the ties that connect us as firefighters, as working people and as Californians.