Fire Dept. Faces Order to Stop Pushing Medics

The Los Angeles Fire Department is facing an order to quit intimidating and harassing members of the United Paramedics of Los Angeles and their leaders over whether paramedics should also be firefighters.

Doug Collins, executive director of the city Employee Relations Board, was preparing a draft of the order on Friday. It will be presented for final approval at the board’s next session in August, then posted for 30 days in the city’s fire stations.

Unfair Labor Practices

In a meeting earlier this week, the five-member board agreed with a hearing officer’s finding that Fire Department administrators had engaged in unfair labor practices two years ago in a concerted effort to get paramedics to approve paramedic-firefighter status.

The examiner, Archie Kleingartner, observed after a series of hearings that to win the coveted change, Fire Department management had tried to bypass and undermine the union’s leadership by going directly to the membership and by “intimidating and harassing” union officials.

His recommended order, revised in one respect and adopted by the Employee Relations Board, directs the Fire Department to cease attempts to control the union’s decision-making about whether city paramedics should also be firefighters.

Board members reversed Kleingartner’s finding that upheld a five-day suspension of Chris Dale, a paramedic who tape-recorded a 1985 departmental meeting with union members on the dual-status question over the objections of top-ranking Fire Department officials.

Dual-Status Proposal

Dual status has long been proposed by Fire Department officials, who see the advantages of its flexibility, and opposed by union members, who argue that specialization by paramedics results in better emergency medical care for the public.

Also, Fred Hurtado, union president, testified in the Kleingartner hearings that “if the system was converted to firefighter-paramedics, (since) another union represents the firefighters, UPLA would cease to exist.”

While still a point of disagreement, dual status is not at the center of current negotiations between the city and the union over a new work agreement. Union members have been working without a contract since June, 1985, and they recently engaged in a job action by refusing to work overtime to enforce demands.

Charges that the Fire Department had engaged in unfair labor practices against the union were filed in August and September, 1985, after a special team formed by Fire Chief Donald O. England had reported on emergency medical services.

Union Allegations

The union charged that discussions of the report at departmental meetings with paramedics had been an attempt to unfairly influence its members regarding dual status and to mislead paramedics into thinking that dual function had been approved by all emergency medical service team members, including the paramedic representative.

The union also charged that after being informed of its continued opposition to dual status, the Fire Department management contacted two union board members, who subsequently wrote a memorandum favoring dual status.

In responding to the charges, the Fire Department contended that the union’s unfair labor practices complaints were thinly disguised attempts to conceal deep divisions on its board of directors and to blame some other entity for an inability to maintain broad membership support.

“I can’t help but be disappointed,” Acting Fire Chief Darrell Thompson said Friday. “I hope the decision does not impede our ability to communicate with our employees.”