Kelly Days for Cops and Firefighters

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, hello, this is Steve calling from Newport News, Virginia.

I’m a firefighter and have been for going on 24 years.

We have a schedule and it’s nationwide.

A lot of departments do the same thing and it’s called a Kelly Day.

So a Kelly Day would be a day that when you would normally be scheduled to work, you’re off that day.

So if you work every other day, 24 hours on your, let’s say, seventh day, you’re off and you have three days off, if that makes sense.

But my question is the origin of Kelly Day.

And if you’re interested, I can tell you some of the lore around it and some of my research that I did, and you can let me know which one’s right.

Yeah, let her rip.

All right.

One of the ones, one of the first ones I heard was that it was a firefighter chief or a firefighter somewhere that created the schedule, and his last name used to be Kelly.

That’s a pretty boring answer, but that’s pretty much the standard one that most people know.

Another, and less savvy, proposed that the etymology is the schedule already existed, but didn’t necessarily have a name for that day.

And instead, that was more or less a day that the person, that someone, the firefighter, would leave their house to supposedly be en route to work, but instead would surreptitiously slink off to their mistress, whose name was Kelly.

Oh, no.

That’s the more fun kind of, you know, side of your mouth kind of answer, but that’s the one that a lot of people like.

And lastly, and probably most likely, but least fun, is that there was a mayor during the Depression that, in order to save money for the city, and I can’t recall the city if I ever knew, created a schedule in order to basically save money for the city to not let responders be at work.

So of those three, any of those ring true, or you got something new for me?

Yeah, I do have something new, and it’s probably the mayor.

It was Edward Joseph Kelly, who was the mayor of Chicago from 1933 to 1947.

He supposedly put a plan in place in 1936.

But there’s a larger picture here of why Kelly days, as they’re called, these extra days that you get off, sometimes called Kelly hours or Kelly shifts or Kelly schedules.

But there’s extra information there.

And that is that in 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, the FLSA.

And it’s complicated to explain all this, but it was part of New Deal legislation, and it established a 44-hour work week.

But as you know, firefighters are on call all the time.

Do you do 24-hour shifts?

Yes.

Yes.

Some people in the jurisdiction actually do 48-hour shifts, and then they’re off for 72.

But, yeah, varying schedules of the same type, yeah.

And so this was the problem where firefighters at the time were working 84 to 96 hours per week, and there was no overtime.

But the FLSA set some time limits on what was considered a standard work week and established some pay for overtime.

But there were always these carve-outs, these exceptions for firefighters because their work was so complicated.

Even, you know, whoever does your schedule at the firehouse, I am quite sure they have a heck of a time.

Now imagine that on a municipal level, just keeping firefighters on duty where needed, when needed.

So the number of hours that a work week counts for changed in 1939 to 42.

And then in October of 1940, it changed to 40 hours per week.

And this is when we see the term Kelly Day first appear.

So my understanding, and I have sought clarification of this with the International Firefighter Organization, is that the FLSA, this law where it handled firefighter cases, was modeled on what had already taken place in Chicago.

But the general belief is, again, it comes from Edward Joseph Kelly, the mayor of Chicago.

But as you noted, Kelly is an incredibly common name.

Many firefighters are Irish in the history of firefighting, right?

So I would put this at a 60% chance of being right.

Right, yeah.

And again, it’s just things get passed around with lore a long time, and sometimes I think the stories are created just for the entertainment value of it all.

And back when I first started this, we didn’t have phones in our pockets to pull them out and try to prove one another wrong, so you kind of just went on whatever someone told you, and hence the whole mistress ordeal, which, you know, again, was pretty unlikely, but fun anyway.

And if it’s just chit-chat around the firehouse and you’re not writing a book, then the stakes are low.

Absolutely.

Absolutely, Grant.

Yes, sir.

Well, I want to thank you in person for your hard work out there and give our best to everyone down at the station.

I sure will.

And I appreciate talking to you, Grant, and you as well, Martha.

And I hope you all are doing well.

I look forward to hearing the show more and more and more.

So thank you.

You take care of yourself out there.

Again sometime, Steve. Take care. Thank you. All right. Bye. Call us with your workplace jargon, 877-929-9673.