By Thomas J. Prohaska
The Buffalo News
LOCKPORT, N.Y. — The city is going to court to try to overturn a state arbitrator’s ruling that the Fire Department doesn’t assign enough firefighters to each shift.
Mayor Michael W. Tucker said at this week’s Common Council meeting that the city has no intention of hiring nine new firemen, which is the number Fire Chief Thomas J. Passuite asserts would be necessary to fully comply with the ruling.
Passuite said the alternative would be to pay an annual overtime tab of some $600,000. Tucker said the city’s not going to do that, either.
Asked during the public comment period by Council candidate Jack L. Smith Jr. what the city intends to do if it’s determined to neither hire nor pay overtime, Tucker wouldn’t say.
“I’m not going to make any comments about what the future might hold,” the mayor told Smith.
In the past few years, the Council has toyed half-heartedly with the notion of switching to a volunteer fire department, or a combination of professionals and volunteers such as that used for many years in North Tonawanda. Nothing serious has been done to advance that idea, however.
Asked if he’s concerned this arbitration ruling might open the door to a fully or partly volunteer fire force, Passuite said, “I’m always concerned about consequences.”
Lockport Professional Firefighters Association President Randall Parker would not comment on anything pertaining to the arbitration case.
The union filed a grievance because Passuite reduced the minimum staffing level per shift from 10 men to nine to save money on overtime. The arbitrator found that endangered the safety of the men working.
Under the terms of the union contract, if vacations or absences reduce a shift below the official minimum, members of other platoons must be called in to make up the difference, and they are paid time-and-a-half for the whole shift.
The Fire Department uses two shifts a day, one 14 hours and the other 10 hours. The roster is divided into four platoons, three of which currently have 12 firefighters. The fourth has 11.
The contract says no more than four men are allowed to be off on any given day because of vacations. Passuite said bringing each platoon up to 14 members would avoid the need to ever call anyone in to fill up a minimum 10-man shift. That means nine new firefighters would be needed, with two assigned to the first three platoons and three to the smallest platoon.
The current starting salary of a firefighter is $37,154; with benefits, the tab goes to about $45,000, Passuite said. That’s a cost of $405,000 for nine new hires.
The city cut minimum staffing from 10 to nine in April 2002 to save money on overtime. But in January 2003, an agreement with the union took effect, setting the minimum staffing at 10 men per shift in exchange for the union’s reducing the number of firefighters allowed to be off from four to three.
That deal expired at the end of 2005, and Passuite cut the minimum staffing back to nine, while the union moved the maximum number of absentees back up to four.
Tucker said, “If we lose the [court] decision, we certainly aren’t going to be hiring any more firefighters.”
He also said, “We’re certainly not going to sit by and let overtime go through the roof.”
Copyright 2009 The Buffalo News
All Rights Reserved