Lakewood Firefighters To City: DROP DEAD

[Bill Call]

More to follow!

[Jim O'Bryan]

More to follow!

Bill


Seemed pretty tense when I got my 4-color insert in the Cleveland Plain Dealer from the Fireman's Union that declared this administration was lying and trying to make the city less safe.


FWIW


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[Bryan Schwegler]

Awesome, love to see everyone working together.

[Bill Call]

If you haven’t seen the despicable flyer from the Fire Fighters Local 382 send a private message with an email address and I’ll forward a copy.

Where to begin?

The hoary diatribe says in part:

"The City Administration claims the City is facing a $1.5 million shortfallâ€￾.

The City is facing a $4 million deficit in its general fund, a fact verified by the State of Ohio. Without cost control the City will end the current fiscal year with NO money in the bank and and an operating deficit. The City is prohibited by law from operating at a deficit.

"The City…. has cut the fire department budget by at lease $531,000…as many as four fewer fie fighters will be available per shift."

The City has lowered the minium staffing levels by four fire fighters. 30 fire fighters are assigned to each shift. On any given day as many as 9 fire fighters are absent for one reason or another, sometimes more. The City was forced to reduce the minimum staffing level because the fire fighters refused to accept this one basic concept: Show up for work when scheduled.

"Lakewood fire fighters will continue to work with the current administration."

That is simply a lie. Local 382 has no intention of working with the current administration.

"With fewer fire fighters available to fight fires, save lives and protect property, response times will increase and services will decrease, putting the safety of our citizens and fire fighters in jeopardy."

If all fire fighters scheduled to work showed up for work the change in minimum staffing levels would have no affect on staffing levels. The problem is that fire fighters don’t show up for work. The 400% increase in sick time over the years has put a nearly $1.5 million dollar hole in the City budget year in and year out for quite some time.

Care about the City? Care about lives? What a hoot.

If fire fighters cared about the City they would put a halt to their economic war against the City.

If fire fighters cared about the City they wouldn’t be sponsoring a hate campaign against the City and its people.

If fire fighters cared about safety they would show up for work.

TO THE CITIZENS OF LAKEWOOD: If in your office 35% of the work force was absent for one reason or another each and every day would you say you had a problem? Would you say you had a work force that cared about the company?

I noticed that the flyer sponsored by the union didn’t list the email addresses and phone numbers of fire fighters or their representatives in the union. Don’t they want to hear from the people? I guess not.

What does their hatefull flyer tell us? That the fire fighters war against the people of the City been expanded to include a war against our elected representatives.

[David Anderson]

This is an important issue, Bill. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

You wrote, "The City has lowered the minimum staffing levels by four fire fighters. 30 fire fighters are assigned to each shift. On any given day as many as 9 fire fighters are absent for one reason or another, sometimes more."

Can this statistic be independently and indisputably verified?

Thanks.

[Bill Call]

You wrote, "The City has lowered the minimum staffing levels by four fire fighters. 30 fire fighters are assigned to each shift. On any given day as many as 9 fire fighters are absent for one reason or another, sometimes more."

Can this statistic be independently and indisputably verified?

Thanks.

It's probably better if you get the information right from the fire department:

fire@lakewoodoh.net

I have recieved slightly different versions over the years. The last explanation went something like this:

30 Fire fighters and ems workers per shift.

5 scheduled off for Kelly days, light duty days, workers comp days, union business days, vacation days, sick days, family medical leave days spouse, family medical leave days, other, holidays etc. When fewer than 25 employees are available for duty off duty officers need to be called in to maintain the minimum staffing level of 25.

The administration reduced the minimum staffing level by four. That means people will no longer be called until the staffing level falls below 21.

Total fire department overtime in 2006 was about $1.3 million. Most of the overtime was related to the need to call in fire fighters to maintain the minimum staffing level.

The use of sick hours by the police department over the last few years has been relatively constant. The use of sick hours by the FD has increased by about 300% (I'm going by memory, you can get up to date numbers from the FD).

I was willing to leave this whole issue alone because I thought the administration had come up with a very reasonable solution. The firefighters thought differently.

Good hunting.

[Phil Florian]

I e-mailed the FD yesterday with this very question but have not heard back. I half wonder if they are getting a ton of these. Are the actual contracts open to the public? I am curious how many sick and vacation days each firefighter gets. Do they work the 24 on/48 off model that Cleveland FD uses (or used to...this was what my dad did back in the day but he retired in '93 so I don't know if that changed).

If an employer gives a person 10 Sick days a year (gracious, but not abnormal in public service) would this translate to 3 or 4 24 hour shifts? Same with vacation. Assume a 10 Day vacation (also typical, probably less) down to 3 or 4, too. Just curious.

The Fire Department is in a tough position. On the one hand, they have to do the best job that they can with 21 men and women serving at night if their fellow firefighters call off. On the other, they have to show that people are at risk. How to balance that? If someone gets hurt because of delay or not enough people, what will be blamed? The lack of numbers on duty or uninspired firefighters out to prove a point? I wouldn't want to walk that line. The union clearly does, though. I hope Bill's numbers get a good scrubbing for accuracy and if they are, a follow up to this should be published. I am a long time Union member in my field but I hate when my fellow brothers and sisters in the Union make it tough for the rest of us by abusing the system and expecting the Union to make it all better.

[Phil Florian]

The Chief responded today with these slightly different numbers. 30 are still scheduled but the old number was a minimum staffing of 24 and that number has been reduced to 20 so if it falls below 20 (not 21) another employee is called in for overtime.

Bill, I asked my questions in the last post without reading yours more in depth...I got to the e-mail and stopped reading and sent the question to their department!

Those 5 "Kelly days" are to cover everything you listed? Just curious. That isn't bad when you think that a shift is 3x as long as any of ours. That is essentailly 3 weeks of my job taken off per year.

I responded to the Chief to ask if he could share time-off statistics. We will see if he is able to respond to that.

[David Scott]

The safety issue of having 20-24 firefighters on duty when previously there were at minimum of 24 is easy. Management makes sure that no more then 5 people (17% of the workforce) is not absent.

[Bill Call]

Those 5 "Kelly days" are to cover everything you listed? Just curious. That isn't bad when you think that a shift is 3x as long as any of ours. That is essentailly 3 weeks of my job taken off per year.

I responded to the Chief to ask if he could share time-off statistics. We will see if he is able to respond to that.

Any response?

In 1985 the City employed 70 firefighters and officers. Those officers used very little sick time. In 2006 we had 78 firefighters. More firefighters, fewer calls and more overtime.

Here is some information from a couple of years ago for an average work load:

120 days scheduled
7 holidays
12 kelly days
12.5 vacation days
88.5 days worked per year

That's about 8 days per month.

If sick time is used then there are fewer than 88.5 days worked per year. In 2004 the Fire Department was using about 850 sick hours per month. How many days a year are you sick?

1985 seems to be a good year to use as a benchmark for the City of Lakewood workforce. 70 Firefighters, less overtime, less sick time, heavier work load.

[dl meckes]

In 1985 were firefighters and EMS partnered? EMS in the fire stations?

[ryan costa]

There was this one episode of Dukes of Hazard. Rosco is chastising the Duke Boys for not doing their volunteer firemen training for a while. The Duke Boys hop in their car and start practicing to fight fires.

Their equipment looked pretty old, but that was what the folks of Hazard County were willing to pay for. I suspect if there were a full time fire department and it asked for too much the fictional folks of fictional Hazard County would say, "just let it burn!"

[Eric Conroy]

Just curious:

How many of those "sick calls" are long term injuries? Your figure of 850 hours/month equals about 35 days or just over one guy per day. Do any companies you know have a perfect attendance record? How about any companies where employees are exposed to hazardous conditions and infectious illness?

[Dee Martinez]

Just curious:

How many of those "sick calls" are long term injuries? Your figure of 850 hours/month equals about 35 days or just over one guy per day. Do any companies you know have a perfect attendance record? How about any companies where employees are exposed to hazardous conditions and infectious illness?

I have a question. If firemens sick days equal 24 hours each as you note, do 12.5 vacation days equal 'days" or hours?
My paystub shows I have 80 hours of vacation time to take this year. That's 10 8-hour days or two weeks.
Does a fireman get 12.5 8-hour days or 12.5 24-hour days?

[dl meckes]

Some good questions.

I also have another: How many calls did EMS/Firefighters answer in 1985 and how many calls did they answer in 2007?