Another fire union upset over staffing
By Kevin Kelley
Westlake
Published March 25, 2009

Add Westlake to the list of Westshore cities where firefighters are upset with management over staffing issues.

According to Patrick Grealis, president of Local 1814, members are upset over two matters.

First, Grealis said, the fire department is allowing shifts to go below the nine-man minimum levels traditionally set by the city’s fire chief. This has been happening once or twice a week of late, Grealis said, because of personnel being on sick leave or vacation.

Fire Chief Ronald Janicek disputed this, telling West Life that since Nov. 25, the department has had fewer than nine firefighters on duty only seven times. The department has never been below eight for any extended period of time, the chief added.

Janicek said he dropped minimum staffing standards in favor of the practice of calling in firefighters for overtime work on days when the city receives a lot of calls.

Grealis spoke publicly about this issue at a February Westlake City Council meeting. Union officials later met with Janicek and Mayor Dennis Clough over the staffing issue, but apparently nothing was resolved.

A second issue angering the union is a proposal to have two firefighter/ paramedics instead of the current three-man crew go out on rescue squad runs for medical calls that are less serious in nature. Three paramedics would continue to go on ambulance runs for more serious medical emergencies such as heart attacks.

At Thursday’s council meeting, union Vice President Craig Goodwin again asked council to intervene in the matter.

Goodwin said the mayor and fire chief were “confrontational” during the union-management meeting and thus no resolutions came about. The union vice president called the meeting with the mayor unproductive and asked for a meeting with council’s three-man safety committee to further discuss the issues. Reductions in staffing levels, Goodwin told council, “pose a severe risk that Westlake citizens shouldn’t be asked to assume unknowingly.”

“With the advent of the EMS billing last year, we believe that a 33 percent reduction in ambulance staffing is an unreasonable level of care for the citizens while at the same time charging them for the service,” Goodwin said. “EMS billing was meant to enhance the level of service, not reduce it.”

Also during the public session, Cecelia Baker and Mary Levtzow, candidates for council seat in wards 2 and 4, gave impassioned arguments against two-man ambulance runs.

During the mayor’s report, Clough said the budget of the city’s fire department has grown every year since he became mayor 24 years ago.

Clough said fire chiefs across the Westshore are discussing sending out only two paramedics on some ambulance runs.

“There has been no decision made with respect to that,” Clough said at Thursday’s meeting. “But the audit that we had done by an independent company, a consultant, they specifically said that two men would be acceptable and recommended, in fact, for a basic life support type of a call.”

On Monday, Janicek told West Life that he will implement a policy of two-men ambulance runs for less serious calls beginning April 1. It’s a waste of personnel to send three paramedics out on relatively minor calls, Janicek explained.

The decision on how many paramedics will go out on a call will be made by the dispatchers at the Westshore Central Dispatch Center, Janicek said.

“We always err on the side of caution,” Janicek said regarding such decisions.

Janicek confirmed to council that Westshore fire chiefs have been discussing using only two men on some ambulance calls since August.

“I am proud of the fire department that we have,” Clough said, adding that the service and manpower have increased over the years.

Clough said that while some cities have been forced to lay off firefighters, Westlake City Council approved hiring three additional firefighters in 2009.

That leads to the issue of alternative scheduling, the third one on which the union and management are at odds.

Westlake firefighters currently work on 24-hour shifts. But Janicek said that most calls to the department come in between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. Therefore, the argument goes, it would be more productive to hire additional firefighters to work when the most calls come in.

The alternative scheduling has been a trend on the West Coast, Janicek said, but the local union has opposed it.

City Council approved hiring three additional firefighters, but on the condition that they work under an alternative work schedule.

Grealis said hiring new firefighters to work anything but a 24-hour shift is prohibited under the current union contract, which runs through March 2010.

“They don’t have the right to hire them that way,” Grealis said of the proposed alternate shifts.

Grealis views the city’s effort to implement alternative scheduling as trying to renegotiate the contract mid term.

“I signed it (the contract), and so did the mayor,” Grealis said of the contract now in effect.

When asked to respond to the charge that the city was trying to renegotiate the contract midterm, Clough said the union asked for the recent meeting with management. “We’re allowed to negotiate if they want to negotiate it,” the mayor said regarding alternative work schedules. If not, the city will bring the issue up when negotiations commence for the next contract, Clough said.

Grealis told West Life he wouldn’t rule out alternative scheduling in the next contract, but questioned what the benefit would be for union members.

“Like any contract, it’s give and take,” he said regarding future negotiations.

Grealis said that during previous labor negotiations, when the city pressed for the alternative work schedule, the union pressed for minimum staffing levels to be written into the contract. An arbitrator told both sides to throw both issues out, Grealis said.

When asked if the city would consider hiring the three new firefighters to work under the current 24-hour shifts, Clough said the matter was still under discussion.

Council President Michael Killeen told West Life that he’s not sure that council should get involved in what he termed a labor-management issue. While council votes to approve the final contract negotiated with the union, it doesn’t get involved in negotiations, and in fact has been previously advised by the law department to stay out of labor negotiations, Killeen said.

Killeen said he will urge the union to have further talks with management.

Councilman Michael O’Donnell, chair of council’s safety committee, said Monday that no safety issue currently exists to warrant a meeting of the safety committee.

On the Web:

• City of Westlake