OC fire contract talks remain at standstill
Tuesday the deadline for Ocean City and it’s firefighters union to come to agreement on a new contract expired. The two parties remain divided on one main issue, changing 24 hour shifts to rotating 12 hour shifts. “our men and women have saved many, many lives on the current 24/72 rotation,” said Ryan Whittington, the president of the OC Firefighter’s Union.
Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Rick Meehan and Ocean City Deputy Fire Chief Chuck Barton, who sides with the town, addressed why negotiations went awry. Talks apparently came to a stand-still because of the proposed shift change.
Right now first responders work one-day on and three-days off, but the new proposal would put them working a rotating night or day shift four times a week. Town officials say the change is for good reason.
Chief Barton told 47 ABC, “When people are awake for extended periods of time, it is well documented that their cognitive performance suffers, that being awake for extended periods of time results in fatigue” Mayor Rick Meehan added, “we have had instances where calls were missed, where delays came into play, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid. Is that something they do a great job at, yes, but we believe we can make it better,”
However, Whittington tells us that the town and union tried this before with some responders for an eight-month period and it actually had an adverse effect and actually fatigued workers. Meehan said that he was unaware of fatigue issues and told us the 12-hour shifts were discontinued because they created scheduling conflicts. As for the future, Whittington says the union would be open to a shift change if the town had a stronger case against the 24-hour shifts.
“The first thing we want is to identify what is the problem and if we could find what the problem is that the city is having we would want to study that issue to ensure that the schedule is proposing is the best for our firefighters,”
Because they couldn’t agree by the deadline the city’s “best and final offer” will take over on July 1st. It includes the shift changes, a pay raise, other incentives for the firefighters union and will expire after 3 years. Meehan says that to help make the transition a bit smoother the shift changes will take effect October 2017 as opposed to 2016.
Changes can still be made to the final offer. A labor management committee made up of representatives from the fire fighters union and the town will meet ten days from now to discuss potential options. The two parties were apparently scheduled to meet seven times and we’re told that due to a cancellation from the town and absences from union, they only met four times.
