By William Crum, Staff Writer
Breakfast was ready Friday when a call came over the loudspeaker in southwest Oklahoma City’s Fire Station 25.
By the time Engine 25’s crew pulled back into the station and sat down to eat, the clock had turned from breakfast to brunch.
Shift work for a firefighter means going 24 hours straight.
In a year, it adds up to 700 more on-duty hours than a regular eight-to-fiver puts in working 40 hours per week.
International Association of Fire Fighters Local 157 President Phil Sipe said the schedule and the nature of the work — Friday morning’s medical run was in response to an assault — put a premium on time away.
That’s the crux of a dispute between the union and the city over how to keep fire trucks in service while assuring firefighters can use the holiday and vacation leave they earn.
Resolving the dispute to firefighters’ satisfaction could cost $5.5 million or more annually, a price the city has been unwilling to pay.
The Fire Department still puts out fires, investigates arsons and works at fire prevention.
But as the city grows, the vast majority of calls are for medical emergencies.
In its 2014-15 budget proposal, the department said it responded to 50,520 medical emergencies and 3,018 fires in fiscal 2012-13.
To adapt, the department has trained firefighters as paramedics, converting engines to “advanced life support” rigs that carry a crew of four.
Those crews provide the same level of medical care as an ambulance and often arrive quicker.
Sipe calls the fire service the “backbone” of the emergency medical response system in Oklahoma City.
“Response times in emergency services is everything,” he said.
City figures show fire trucks called to medical emergencies arrived within five minutes 63 percent of the time in 2012-13; the goal for this year is 70 percent, the same as for fire calls.
Providing that level of service means a minimum of 225 firefighters — a figure agreed to by the union and city — must be on duty at any given moment.
To keep up, Sipe says, the city needs to hire 90 to 120 more firefighters on top of the 848 it has now, offer more overtime, or buy back accrued vacation and holiday leave.
Instead, in a grievance filed in November 2011, the union contended fire department policies aimed at maintaining minimum staffing levels were making it impossible for firefighters to “schedule and take” their vacation and holiday leave in the year it was earned.
As of Friday, the city said firefighters had accrued 244,264 hours of unused vacation leave.
Arbitrator rules
In ruling on the grievance, arbitrator Byron Thomason found the problem of firefighters scheduling leave time only to see it canceled had “festered” for some time.
A joint city-union committee came up with a solution, he wrote, and the city council approved $312,764 to implement a new staffing policy.
The union filed its grievance after concluding the city wasn’t holding up its end of that October 2011 bargain.
Thomason said in his findings that the “city must recognize that an increase in staffing responsibilities (more bodies) can’t be accomplished while reducing personnel (fewer bodies).
