Boston Globe endorses Mayor’s efforts to reduce sick time

Calling it “a model for other cities and towns”, the Boston Globne today endorsed Mayor Fiorentini’s proposals to reduce overtime and sick leave by monitoring the use of sick time.

The Globe said said:

The Boston Globe, July 16, 2009

Haverhill: An eye for sick-leave abuses

Taxpayers in Haverhill got more than their money’s worth from the $13,000 spent on a private investigator who videotaped four of the city’s firefighters performing tasks such as lugging furniture, shoveling snow, and attending a hockey game after calling in sick. It appears that some Haverhill firefighters have caught the “dupe-the-public bug’’ common in other fire departments where overtime costs and sick time spike way above comparable costs in other city departments. The Haverhill firefighters union is calling it an unfair labor practice. But Mayor James Fiorentini is more concerned with fairness to the taxpayers and the overall fiscal health of his city. His efforts to sanitize Haverhill’s firehouses should be a model for other cities and towns with similar problems.

The High Cost of Union Time Off

Our contracts with our unions provide that if an employee needs time off for union business, then they can do that on city time and we will pay them for the time. If we have to fill the spot with another employee, we pay that other employee time and half. All of this is standard in employer/employee relationships.

These agreements require a certain amount of trust, and a certain amount of work by the unions to make certain that their members never misuse the privilege. 

Over the past several months, we have been tracking the use of union leave by various departments to see if there is misuse. Here are some numbers, you tell me if you think that anyone is misusing the system:

In the first six months of 2007, the highway had no time for union time, the clty clerk’s office, zero, the police department had $1,272 in time, to attend some conferences or meetings.  The teacher’s union, which does not get overtime, did not use any on the job time for negotiating.

The Fire Department, in that same period, cost us $8,500 in union time. 

That was 2007. In the first six months of 2008, the highway department and clerk’s office again had zero, the police department had $1,272, and this time, the fire department union time cost us $26,500.  Previous fire department unions in the city have averaged around $4,000 to $5,000 a year in union time. 

Use of union time in the fire department more than tripled from one year to the next and is 20 times more than in the police department. (Both groups, by the way, are in the process of contract negotiations.)

We have instituted a new policy in the fire department– a very simple one. If you are out on union time, you tell us why you are out and fill out a form justifying the reason. 

That new policy has spawned a number of complaints and grievances from the union. 

We are not going to tolerate anyone abusing the system. 

That’s my view. What’s yours?

 

 

 

Jim Fiorentini