Injury Leave Reported as "Called in Sick"
THE MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, CITY COUNCIL voted on Friday to abandon the require minimum-staffing standard that they had insituted six years ago. Instead of requiring at least 96 uniformed FF's on duty for each shift, they are now saying that 92 will be all that is required. Fire Chief Alex Jackson promptly announced that on the days where less than 96 are on duty (which will be most days now that some more overtime callback will be cut) he will be closing one of four outlying fire stations on a rotating basis. The response times for those areas will be increased by as much as 3 minutes and in one area it will take an additional 5-½ minutes for the first engine to arrive.
Friday's council session began with the body voting to shift enough money from budgeted payroll for vacant city jobs to maintain the 96 minimum, but Mayor Rybeck promptly vetoed the bill. The council is already using $1.75 million from a contingency fund to postpone a planned layoff of 31 more firefighters. The city has reduced it firefighter roster by more than 60 positions in the past eight years.
Layoffs of 34 firefighters in 2003 triggered this
protest by uniformed members (MPR photo)
In a pathetic attempt to shift the blame for the city's mismanagement, the council and the mayor have not hesitated to make deliberately misleading claims such as:
* They claim that the state has cut the assistance funding to Minneapolis, thus creating a hole in the budget. But the Star Tribune points out that the state assistance is the same amount, $64 million, that it was last year. However, the council passed last year's budget that presumed that the state would provide their wish-list of about $90 million that was never promised. The smoke-and-mirrors stunt didn't work.
* The mayor is yelping that on a recent day the fire department had 10 firefighters who "called in sick" on that day, implying that some sort of blue-flu protest was being carried out. But the president of the firefighters union Local pointed out very emphatically that those 10 "sick" firefighters were all out on injury leave caused by on-the-job injuries.
KMSP-TV Ch. 9 ran this informative interview with Local president Mark Lakosky Sunday night where he literally unloads on the mayor. Not surprisingly, the mayor's office refused to send over a representative to debate the charges:
The Minneapolis Star Tribune has the STORY.
IAFF Local 82 WEBSITE.
Review FossilMedic's report on the city council's controversial "board-up" program using uniformed firefighters to secure burned out buildings HERE.
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Also on FireGeezer…
- Minneapolis Set To Whack Fire Department – July 28, 2011
- Heat’s On in Minneapolis – August 30, 2011
- Minneapolis Fire Chief Alex Jackson to Retire – January 5, 2012
- Minneapolis steals one firefighter from front-line staffing for unprofitable board-up project – April 30, 2011
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