Paramedics Refusing to Work Overtime

Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics refused to work overtime Wednesday in a job action aimed at bolstering their demands in 2-year-old contract negotiations with the city, but the effect on the public--if any--was not immediately apparent.

Fred Hurtado, president of the United Paramedics of Los Angeles, said that volunteers for overtime among paramedics had “virtually ceased to exist” since the job action started. The 350-member organization voted last month to snub overtime from July 1-8 and to picket Los Angeles City Hall on Tuesday.

‘Marked Reduction’

“The net effect of the job action we have seen is a marked reduction in the number of people who have signed up to work volunteer, paid overtime,” Battalion Chief Dean E. Cathey said.

But, Cathey said, all of the city’s 49 emergency ambulances will be fully staffed through the Fourth of July weekend, either by those volunteering to work overtime or by paramedics who have been required to work under a departmental procedure known as assigned overtime.

For the present, according to Cathey, the chief effect of the job action by the United Paramedics of Los Angeles has been an increase in the task of finding volunteers and locating paramedics to fill out ambulance crews.

“I think the bottom line is that the action, itself, is designed to create some political pressure on the City Council,” Cathey said. “The citizens of the city are being held hostage if this action has an impact. We are very concerned about it.”

Hurtado declared that the job action is aimed at two issues rejected by city management: a 9%, one-time salary adjustment recommended by a neutral arbitrator and a reduction from 48 to 36 in the number of consecutive hours a paramedic can be ordered to work.

“For the life of us, we do not understand how they can justify this medically inappropriate, managerial unsound practice of forcing paramedics to work for 48 consecutive hours,” he said.

“It’s dangerous for paramedics. It’s dangerous for patients. It is unreasonable on the part of the city to ask people who do our kind of work to do it under these kinds of conditions,” he added.

Previous Pact

However, Cathey pointed out that the paramedics had agreed in their previous contract to be available for such shifts.

Since the start of the job action at 8 a.m. Wednesday, Hurtado said, “at least three” paramedics have refused to work overtime, even when ordered to do so by the Fire Department. They face possible disciplinary action.

The Fire Department issued a directive last week advising paramedics that anyone who calls in sick or reports a family illness or a death in the family during the period of the job action will be considered absent without approval, Cathey said. He said that those who miss work under those circumstances will have to prove their absences were justified before getting paid.

United Paramedics of Los Angeles members, who handle about 80% of the calls to the Fire Department, have been working without a contract since June, 1985.