THE HAVERHILL, MASSACHUSETTS, FIREFIGHTERS HAVE BEEN butting heads with the mayor over a contentious contract dispute being played out in public. Now the troops are riled up again following the announcement that four firefighters will be suspended for five days after they were videotaped by a private investigator performing strenuous activities while out sick from their city jobs according to Mayor James Fiorentini.
It is believed that the city hired private investigators to snoop on every firefighter who called in sick during the month of December. The four men being disciplined were taped while moving furniture, shoveling snow and climbing a ladder. Another was seen shopping. Oh, and the four just happen to be union officers, two former local presidents, a former vice-president and a firefighter who had publicly insulted the mayor in a dispute over a threat to close a station.
The mayor says that sick people shouldn’t be shoveling snow or going shopping. The Local President says that he saw nothing in the tapes that shows firefighters violating the city’s sick-leave policy. “The policy says if we are unable to perform the duties of our job, that they want us to call out sick,” he said. The president also said two of the firefighters being disciplined were out sick with respiratory problems.
Union-busting, or fiscal prudence? Is the expense of hiring private investigators justified?
Read the article in today’s Eagle-Tribune HERE and decide for yourself.
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