During a recent hearing before the Judiciary Committee the chief of DCFEMS stated, in responds to a question by Council-member Cheh, that civilian EMS personnel of the agency salaries exceeded that of their uniform firefighter counterparts. He qualified this statement by claiming that he was advised of this by the Director of the Office of Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining, Natasha Campbell.
If the bases of his rationale was the interpretation of the Compensation 1 and 2 agreement, the chief was either misinformed or being deceptive. Chief Rubin stated that civilian EMS personnel, because of FLSA, were receiving overtime on pay weeks where the hours exceeded 40 hours and because of this, the take home pay of civilian personnel was greater than firefighters. A review of the Compensation 1 and 2 CBA, Article 8 Sec. Paragraph 3 states the following: The purpose of this Section is to allow for authorized compressed time schedules which exceed eight (8) hours in a day or 40 hours in a week to be deemed the employee's regular tour of duty and not be considered overtime within the confines of the specific compressed work schedule and this Article. The language is both simplistic and unambiguous and any attempt to interpret it any other way would be disingenuous.
Chief Rubin as the DCFEMS Director, has demonstrated an ignorance of the contract that can be significant given Recommendation 1 (d) of the task-force which states: "All employees shall have the same basic pay and benefits. The City Administrator shall develop
a plan, no later than March 31, 2008, to transition to pay and benefits parity between current single-role medical providers and dual-role providers." Although the local never raised this issue during its presentation, the task-force identified this as a major cause, among many, that contributed to cultural and professional disparity within the DCFEMS and fostered a "culture of indifference" .
It is my hope that this oversight was not intentional and that Chief Rubin will continue to maintain an objectivity that will foster a sense of inclusion and fairness and resist those influences that have been responsible for the degradation of services and the demoralization of its workforce.
Please feel free to contact me if you should have any questions.
Sincerely,
Kenneth Lyons, President
AFGE Local 3721
Office: 202 882-9820
Cell: 301 742-2461