Exactly why collective bargaining should be illegal in government positions.

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Originally posted by gw3971:

You are 100% correct till a house is on fire and a child is trapped on the second floor.
I was a volunteer firefighter for years and did it for no money. The department I was with ran over 600 fire only calls a year. No EMS calls.
This guy in California has found a way make the system work to the max. It may be a system the local government agreed to.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 71 TRUCK,

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Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
Exactly why collective bargaining should be illegal in government positions.

I would agree to an extent. Those that hold positions of "normal" government jobs such as teachers, accountants, maintenance workers...yes, get rid of any contract.

However a position that can lend itself to abnormal work hours, specific pay issues, irregular schedules outside the 8-5 norm such as Police, Firefighters, First Responders, etc., then no. There are instances where a CBA is essential to prevent management/city government from abusing and taking advantage of said individuals.

I probably would have left my present position YEARS ago had it not been for the Collective Bargaining Agreement set in place that shields our work group from the abuses by management. Yes...I've filed many grievances in my 13+ years at this company and prevailed in every one thanks to our Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Exiting conversation to avoid more thread drift before the boss steps in...

the phrase 'don't hate the player - hate the game' comes to mind.

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Originally posted by BurtonRW:

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Originally posted by SpinZone:

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Originally posted by 220-9er:

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Originally posted by BurtonRW:

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Originally posted by 220-9er:
And nobody's headed for jail?

I missed the allegation of any fraud. If anyone should go to jail, it’s whoever negotiated the collective bargaining agreement - for stupidity.

-Rob

Missed that he worked more hours than there are in a year?

"But the math behind the pay doesn’t add up. It would have required the firefighter to work 9,280 hours in a year, despite there being 8,760 hours in a single year."

The math is not always as straightforward as the article reports.
As an example, if I work 7 days in a week anything over 36 hours is time and a half but The seventh day will be double time. If you divide up the money I get paid by the straight rate and overtime rate you get more hours then I worked. Some holidays I can end up getting paid holiday pay on top of double time on top of straight time due to a quirk in the way the rules were written (you look for those days)

Exactly. It’s important to read the whole article. In this case, it also helps if one is familiar at all with public sector CBAs. The kind of provisions that make this possible are not uncommon. This guy just takes advantage better than many.

-Rob

Likely it is am ambiguous provision being misinterpreted or used not as intended by either party. It's often cheaper for management not to fight. But the fact that this isn't widespread strongly suggests its less than accepted by everyone.

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Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
Exactly why collective bargaining should be illegal in government positions.

Yep. Even FDR knew that government employee unions should never be allowed to collectively bargain.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15445

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All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

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Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
Exactly why collective bargaining should be illegal in government positions.

BamaJeepster beat me to it... but even socialist FDR knew it.
What Was FDR’s Stance on Government Unions?
https://showmeinstitute.org/bl...ce-government-unions

And yet:

Get it while you can Don ! Just know every fire/rescue run you go to increases your odds of some bad shit coming your way. This article is just about hazards of smoke. You also have to look at exposure to whatever is out there from third world countries for exposures to communicable disease.

+++LINK+++


How Modern Furniture Endangers Firefighters

Consumer goods are increasingly made of synthetic materials and coatings. The carcinogens they give off when they burn could be driving high cancer rates among first responders.

Tony Stefani had been a firefighter in San Francisco for nearly 28 years when, one January day in 2001, he was out jogging and began to feel weak. “The last mile I could barely run, I had to walk,” he told me recently. When he got home, he urinated blood. He was soon diagnosed with transitional cell carcinoma, a rare cancer of the kidney.

Chris Miller, a firefighter in Kentucky, had lymphoma 10 years ago. He got chemo, went to rehab, spent six weeks in a hospital, and lost 60 pounds. He took four months off work. The chemo wore him out and made his limbs tingle. It made him sterile. He will be 45 in November.

In 2008, Keith Tyson had recently retired after 34 years of firefighting in Miami when doctors found an aggressive cancer in his prostate. He says roughly a third of his department has had some form of cancer in the past three years.

“I’m not saying that every single one of those cancers was caused by the job,” Tyson said. “But at the same time ... we have a problem.”

Ironically, the most dangerous thing about an occupation that involves running into burning buildings isn’t the flames, but the smoke. Cancer is the leading cause of firefighter line-of-duty deaths in the United States, and according to the International Association of Fire Fighters, about 60 percent of career firefighters will die this way, “with their boots off,” as they call it.

There’s a misconception that only the firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11 risk developing cancer, because of their exposure to asbestos and jet fuel. But in fact, cancer threatens firefighters everywhere, every day.

Although a causal link has not yet been proven, the association between firefighting and a greater cancer risk began to build about 10 years ago. A meta-analysis found that firefighters have a higher risk of multiple myeloma, and possibly a greater risk of contracting non-Hodgkin lymphoma, prostate, and testicular cancers.

From there, more evidence rolled in: Research into Massachusetts firefighters found greater odds of developing brain and colon cancers. Firefighters in their 30s and 40s from five Nordic countries were found last year to have a greater chance of developing prostate and skin cancers. In 2013, researchers studying 30,000 firefighters in three U.S. cities found the profession was associated with “small to moderate increases” in risk for various cancers, particularly respiratory, digestive and urinary malignancies. The study also found that the risk of lung cancer increased with every fire they fought.

“The longer you’re a firefighter, the greater your chance of getting some kind of cancer,” says Susan Shaw, the executive director of the Marine & Environmental Research Institute and a professor of environmental health sciences at the State University of New York in Albany. “These are people who have a gladiator mentality, and they're really tough. [But] now you have a different kind of danger.”

* * *

The problem is our stuff. Possessions make our lives cozy and convenient, but when they catch fire, they become noxious fuel. The cancer rates are being driven up, researchers believe, by chemicals that lace the smoke and soot inside burning buildings. Consumer goods are increasingly manufactured using synthetic materials, and fires are more toxic as a result.

A century ago, we furnished our houses with wood, cloth, metal, and glass. Today, it’s plastics, foams, and coatings—all of which create a toxic soup of carcinogens when they burn. Fire experts say synthetic materials create hundreds of times more smoke than organic ones; flame retardants alone double the amount of smoke and increase toxic gasses 10-fold. Your TV, your kid’s Barbie, your Saran wrap, your couch: all of them can be poisonous when they’re ignited and their fumes are inhaled.

“Every substance, when it burns, changes its chemical structure,” said Timothy Rebbeck, a professor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard School of Public Health. “Particularly when you burn something that's synthetic or man-made, you're creating strange compounds that we don't know what they'll do.”
This video, made by the National Institute of Standards and Testing, shows how a “modern” room with synthetic furniture burns faster and with more smoke than does a “legacy” room with wood and cotton furnishings.

Among the chemicals Shaw and others suspect might be harmful are benzene, found in furniture wax; the formaldehyde in cleaning materials; hydrogen cyanide, which is used in the manufacture of synthetic fibers; stick- and stain-resistant coatings like Scotchgard and Teflon; and the flame-retardants that are added to the foam inside furniture.

In 2012, Shaw had paramedics draw the blood of 12 firefighters after they responded to a fire. Their samples contained three times the level of flame retardants as the general population. Their blood levels of perfluorinated chemicals, which are used as non-stick coatings, were twice as high as those of the World Trade Center first responders.

Some flame retardants were phased out in 2005 after studies showed they were building up in human breast milk, but they were replaced with new compounds. Most new couches contain flame retardants, and researchers know little about their health impacts. “The chemical industry replaces the phased-out chemical but with something similar, but it has one bond difference,” Shaw said. “Scientists are trying to follow the market and figure out, ‘What's in it now?’ It's extremely frustrating.”

The American Chemistry Council has defended flame retardants. “Protective chemistries like flame retardants help prevent fires from starting, slow their spread, and reduce their intensity,” the industry group said in a statement.

All people are exposed to these household chemicals, but fires magnify this exposure. When flame retardants and other compounds burn, they create reactive oxygen species—molecules that bind to DNA and cause mutations that can lead to cancer.

“Think about smoke as a bunch of carcinogens, because that’s basically what it is,” said Virginia Weaver, a professor of environmental health at Johns Hopkins University. “The more synthetics there are in the home, the more chemicals are present in the smoke, and the more chemicals that are carcinogens.”

* * *

Firefighters have between one and two minutes to get ready when they’re called. That’s 90 seconds to don 25 pounds of “turnout gear”—thick pants, a coat, boots, gloves, a hood, and mask. The coat and pants don’t seal together. Smoke snakes up under the coat and clings to the body; toxic soot settles in the gaps between gloves and sleeves. Around their necks, firefighters wear permeable, sweatshirt-like hoods that are porous to chemicals.

The suit itself soaks up toxins and later “offgasses” them. Studies have confirmed that firefighters’ gear and skin gets coated in higher levels of potentially carcinogenic compounds, such as phthalates—chemicals that are added to plastics to make them soft—as well as arsenic, lead, and mercury.

The extreme heat helps chemicals enter through the skin: With every 5 degrees that body temperature rises, skin absorption rates increase by as much 400%.

The gasses creep in through mouths and noses. As a firefighter at a house fire, you wear a mask connected to a can of compressed air that you carry on your back. Each breath is effortful and makes a faint sucking sound. The mask is unbearably hot and uncomfortable—it feels like swimming goggles encasing your entire face. You sweat, and it slides around. Leaving a burning building, the only thing you want to do is rip it off and gulp fresh air.

That’s also the worst thing you could do. The “overhaul” period—when the fire is mostly out but the embers are still smoldering—is often when a fire is at its most toxic. Some fire departments have begun stationing safety monitors at overhauls to make sure firefighters don’t take off their masks prematurely.

To reduce their cancer risk, firefighters must remove their gear immediately after leaving a fire and take a shower. (Walking around the firehouse in turnout pants—as firefighters are sometimes depicted doing in movies and TV shows—needlessly increases exposure.)

Ideally, the turnout gear would be laundered immediately. But it requires specialized washing machines that are expensive and not widely available.

Marc Bashoor, the fire chief of Prince George's County in Maryland, said a few of his stations have the washing machines, but they break easily and are expensive to repair. He says the county firefighters’ gear gets professionally cleaned once a year, which isn’t nearly enough, according to Shaw.

To further reduce risk, firefighters should have a second set of turnout gear to wear in case there’s a fire while the first set is being cleaned. But that would cost at least an additional $1,500 per firefighter—a sum many pinched municipalities don’t have.

In Boston, where fire officials estimate that members of the force are 2.5 times more likely to get cancer than civilians, Kathy Crosby-Bell, the mother of a fallen firefighter, raised $500,000, in part to equip the city’s firehouses with washers and dryers.

“This major health threat deserves urgent action on all our parts,’’ Crosby-Bell said at a city council hearing last year. “I’m shocked they don’t have something so basic as a washer and dryer for their gear.”

In the meantime, firefighters around the country are educating each other about strategies to prevent cancer despite their departments’ budgetary limitations. Ryan Pennington, a firefighter in Charleston, West Virginia, said he sometimes takes two or three showers after responding to a fire. The tough-guy image of firefighters, their faces smeared with soot, is actually a dangerous one, he says.

“We all think of firefighters as gritty folks with black all over faces,” he said. “But really, we need to be the squeaky clean people who could go into an office.”

You'd have to pay me a hell of a lot more than 300k to get me to spend every waking moment at work. And I love the job.

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Originally posted by erj_pilot:...Right? Wrong? Who the hell am I to judge, but I'll side with the worker every damn time. Plain and simple...

In other words, you are a socialist.

Would you feel the same if you were the one who had to write the paycheck? There was a report some months ago re a CA BART janitor who made almost $300K in a year with OT, security cams showed him sleeping much of the time. You can write that paycheck as well.

A tidbit re the CA high speed rail. The budget to relocate utilities for a 32 mile stretch around Fresno was $25 Million, is now estimated to be $396 Million. There's another check you can write.

So lets have all public employees make $300K per year.

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Originally posted by 229DAK:

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Thompson justified his pay a few years ago, saying he "basically lived at the station”....

Obviously not married.

Or he married my ex-wife.

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Originally posted by erj_pilot:

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Originally posted by 1s1k:

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Originally posted by erj_pilot:
Hey...if it's in the CBA, then good for him!! Seems the city needs to send someone to the negotiating table that actually knows what the hell they're doing. I wish we could get the negotiating team the firefighters had for our contract negotiations!!!

Read your contract.
KNOW your contract.

Because you can doesn’t always mean you should.

Since I'm now in an industry that thrives on CBA's, my opinion has changed DRASTICALLY over should, may, shall, must, etc. One's quality of life is only as good as the provisions in his CBA. What if the tables were turned and the city was screwing the firefighters just because their negotiator was more sage at the bargaining table? Goes both ways, my friend, and frankly I'm sick and tired of management getting theirs. "Management" gets theirs every freaking day where I work, so it's a breath of fresh air to see the tables turned for once.

Right? Wrong? Who the hell am I to judge, but I'll side with the worker every damn time. Plain and simple...

Yeah but, dude. This isn't a corporation finally getting taken by the worker. This is the taxpayers getting bent over. "Management?" You're essentially talking about the working men and women who pay their taxes. This is absolutely ridiculous and shame on those taking advantage of it.

I have a friend who’s a firefighter and their station motto is “eat until you’re tired then sleep until you’re hungry”.

I also have a friend who’s a cop and when asked for advice from youngsters on being a cop he says “be a firefighter”.

It’s a good gig if you don’t get stuck in the city.

I agree Chongo, it sure would be nice if all of us got that it’s not all a rosey OT fest, I work mandatory OT and it is what it is. I’m willing to bet he doesn’t get paid OT for anything under 56 hours due to the special FLSA deal we as firefighters get. I don’t know how the numbers work there but this is the exception to fire department and not one that looks good. At least no one I know is getting paid like this, even with working a ton of OT.

On top of that the OT wouldn’t be an issue if administrators would stop playing games with the hiring process.

Finally, I work hard for my pay, i and most of the firefighters I know are here to serve the citizens and sometimes that involves long hours and a guy like this makes the rest of us look bad.

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Originally posted by chongosuerte:
Wow.

I'd be happy with simple time and a half for anything over 40 in a week, time and a half for forced days outside your regular schedule, and double time on holidays. And shift differential would be nice too.

And this guy is making $300k.

My guess, as others have eluded to, the CBA reads something akin to "after X number of hours, the employee may charge 1.5 hours of time to his/her timecard."

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Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
Exactly why collective bargaining should be illegal in government positions.

I agree with that. Bargaining against the tax payer...

I think the biggest travesty is still the TSA. Unionized federal government employees who are incompetent and make driving 17 hours preferable over a 2.5 hour flight.

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Thompson justified his pay a few years ago, saying he "basically lived at the station”....

So not only was this son of a bitch milking the OT, he was living rent free. I bet he didn't even have a permanent place to live besides the station.

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Originally posted by JALLEN:
One problem is when public service unions reps negotiate with public service employees who work for the government, “of the public service employees, by the public service employees, for the public service employees.”

There was a scandal in San Diego years ago when it was publicized how fire department managers were passing around the top jobs of allow everyone to retire at max pay, over $100k per year retirement.

Scandal here in Las Vegas a few years ago as well. Involved firefighters colluding to maximize OT pay. One would call off at last minute etc... to allow others to maximize OT pay. Have heard rumors of guys retiring and making more annually in their pensions than they ever made at base salary due to the practice outlined above.
I don't begrudge anyone a living, all I know is every FD Vanity plate I see is on a $80,000 + vehicle.
Good gig if you can get it.

Just FYI:
While around here we tend to be the public safety whipping boy let me get a couple facts together for you.

We generally work 24/48’s so that means on our off time most of us have second jobs.
Why you ask? Because on a larger department the pay isn’t that good. Every fireman I know with an 80k truck has a very lucrative side gig, a 7 year note, a sugar momma or some combination of the three. As far as OT fraud goes, that’s not right however I would hardly say that it is only seen in the fire service. Pensions are hit or miss, mines not that good and I don’t plan on it even being around when I retire. Did I mention my health benefits suck? Finally if you want this gig then come on it doesn’t require a secret handshake to get hired or anything.

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Originally posted by Powers77:

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Originally posted by JALLEN:
One problem is when public service unions reps negotiate with public service employees who work for the government, “of the public service employees, by the public service employees, for the public service employees.”

There was a scandal in San Diego years ago when it was publicized how fire department managers were passing around the top jobs of allow everyone to retire at max pay, over $100k per year retirement.

Scandal here in Las Vegas a few years ago as well. Involved firefighters colluding to maximize OT pay. One would call off at last minute etc... to allow others to maximize OT pay. Have heard rumors of guys retiring and making more annually in their pensions than they ever made at base salary due to the practice outlined above.
I don't begrudge anyone a living, all I know is every FD Vanity plate I see is on a $80,000 + vehicle.
Good gig if you can get it.

That mug is certainly increasing his social security retirement check.

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Originally posted by Powers77:

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
One problem is when public service unions reps negotiate with public service employees who work for the government, “of the public service employees, by the public service employees, for the public service employees.”

There was a scandal in San Diego years ago when it was publicized how fire department managers were passing around the top jobs of allow everyone to retire at max pay, over $100k per year retirement.

Scandal here in Las Vegas a few years ago as well. Involved firefighters colluding to maximize OT pay. One would call off at last minute etc... to allow others to maximize OT pay. Have heard rumors of guys retiring and making more annually in their pensions than they ever made at base salary due to the practice outlined above.
I don't begrudge anyone a living, all I know is every FD Vanity plate I see is on a $80,000 + vehicle.
Good gig if you can get it.

There was an article a few years ago re the CA Highway Patrol who would manipulate the timing of overtime, paid time off, etc, to push up their gross pay in the last couple of years of service, which was the base of their retirement pay calculations. IIRC it was most common that they could retire in their early 50's and make more money in retirement (for 30 years) than they made working full time (for 20 years).

This is one of the reasons the CA public employee retirement fund is between $500B and $1T underfunded (depending on the portfolio rate of return used in the calculations). Crash and burn is certain; the timing is uncertain, as is the list of who will get burned and how bad.