Lombardi planning to remove beds from firehouses

Mayor: ‘Tell me where (it says) I’ve got to pay them to sleep.’

NORTH PROVIDENCE – Local firefighters could lose the beds they sleep in at town firehouses under a plan proposed by Mayor Charles Lombardi.

“Stay tuned,” said Lombardi this week.

The head of the local fire union, Jay Petrillo, president of the Local 2334 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, is accusing the mayor of being “negligent” with a plan he says would put firefighters and the public at increased risk of harm. He said the idea is “clearly retaliatory” and “we don’t see any reason for it.”

Lombardi says he remains upset over the union’s action seeking an additional raise in “hazardous duty pay” for all personnel as a response to the mayor adding a third rescue vehicle and taking an engine off the road this year, as well as six subsequent union grievances against the town.

“To give taxpayers more of a bang for their buck, they shouldn’t be sleeping,” he said. “If they want to live and die by the contract, tell me where I’ve got to pay them to sleep.”

Playing a lesser role in his thinking, says Lombardi, was the decision by state lawmakers this month to approve a pair of union-backed bills establishing a 42-hour workweek and mandating continuing contracts. Though the mayor conceded that neither one of those bills impact the town in the immediate future, he says they further erode municipalities’ negotiating power.

Lombardi said officials originally went with the third rescue this year because they saw a need based on more than 600 rescue calls identified as taking 10 to 15 minutes or longer based on outside help needing to be called in. The rule of thumb, he said, is that another rescue requires hiring eight additional firefighters to cover four shifts, plus buying a new truck and paying overtime, all at a cost of up to $700,000, but he was able to do it for nothing.

“I did what I thought was the common sense business approach and shut down that fire truck and redeployed that manpower to the additional rescue,” he said.

With some 80 percent of calls coming in being for rescue service, he said, “we needed to do something about it,” and he was trying to get taxpayers the best value for their money. An estimated $300,000 in annual revenue is now expected due to the extra rescue calls, he said.

Firefighters have received a 12 percent cumulative raise in four years and that will jump to a six-year 21 percent total in the next two years, said Lombardi. That’s all before the extra 3 percent raise the union is seeking through an arbitration process for hazardous duty pay. He maintains that he won’t be “giving another dime” to them.

Fire Chief John Silva said Monday that he doesn’t agree with Lombardi’s tentative plan to remove the beds from local fire stations. Firefighters work long hours and they need a place to rest and rehabilitate between runs, he said, but Lombardi as public safety director gets to make the decision.

Silva said he believes the sides can still sit down and come to a reasonable compromise. He fully expects the current turmoil to end soon and “go back to normal status.” The departure continues to run smoothly, he said.

“I agree 100 percent with the fire chief,” Petrillo responded Monday. “It’s absolutely unsafe to do that.”

Lombardi said Petrillo and others should remember that he once rode the fire trucks and rescues, so he knows there’s nothing especially hazardous about working on a rescue truck. “Is it hazardous or dangerous, or is it money?” he said. “You’re not getting more money.”

When a firefighter is sleeping, it can simply take too long for them to respond to a call, said Lombardi. “Now and then” there are calls that firefighters took too long to get to a patient, he said, and he attributes that to personnel having to get out of bed and get ready.

Petrillo said he’s confused by Lombardi’s statements about taxpayers getting better “bang for your buck” than they’re getting now. The North Providence Fire Department is one of the top 100 fire departments in the country with insurance Class 1 rating, he said, and that’s due to training, response times, and a myriad of other factors.

“I think they get a pretty good bang for their buck,” he said of taxpayers. Petrillo added that he’s not sure how removing beds has anything to do with taxpayers getting their money’s worth. Firefighters work long hours and need rest between their calls, he said, and no resident wants a firefighter who has been awake for 30 to 34 hours with no rest to be administering medications or responding to an emergency situation.

Firefighters aren’t partaking in anything someone would describe as a restful night of sleep, said Petrillo. After 11 p.m., when they are allowed to rest, they basically have “one eye open and one foot on the ground,” and might get an hour or two of sleep. It’s not like they can just go home and catch up on sleep either, he said, as they must fulfill family obligations on the day between their night shifts.

“This is clearly retaliatory based on the contract bill and our issues,” he said, warning that removing the beds would constitute as an unfair labor practice.

“The fact that he would even consider this is confusing to me” given the mayor’s intimate knowledge of the importance of the firefighters and what they do, Petrillo said.

He said he attempted to have a conversation with Lombardi last week and the mayor got angry and called the firefighters names, so he doesn’t intend to have further conversations.

“It didn’t really go well,” he said.

As for the union seeking the extra 3 percent raise, Petrillo said, that was simply a request to put before the arbitrator to give him “something to choose from.” Any time there is a change in working conditions, the union is allowed to seek compensation, he said.

If Lombardi had brought up the matter of adding a rescue last year when the sides were in contract talks there could have been a discussion then about asking for a 1 percent raise going forward, he said. As Petrillo understands it, it was the mayor who previously suggested to union leader predecessors that he was considering adding a rescue in the future and that there could be some added compensation for that.