Minn. Fire Chief Says Weekend Sick Days Show `Disturbing` Pattern

Dec. 12--St. Paul firefighters have "a disturbing -- and costly -- pattern" of calling in sick on weekends, the fire chief told the department in a recent email.

About half of the sick time was taken on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays this year. Sick leave use on Saturdays and Sundays was 53 percent higher than that used on the lowest days of the week, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

"From my conversations with members of this department, I know that sick leave use balloons on the weekend in order to get 'extra time off,' " Fire Chief Tim Butler wrote to his staff on Dec. 4. "Folks, that's misusing the benefit, and we have to stop that misuse. It clearly hurts staffing, it violates the expectation of our citizens, and it's just plain wrong."

Nevertheless, Butler's email said the department is on track to finish the year within its $59 million budget.

He noted the department had been able to staff its three "supermedic" crews -- which provide extra staff at a firehouse to allow crews to handle separate medical and fire calls simultaneously -- more than 95 percent of the time.

But a majority of the time -- 77 percent -- they didn't have enough staff for a supermedic crew was on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

But Mike Smith, who heads the union representing rank-and-file firefighters, said he believes Butler has mismanaged the department's funding and that sick time is not the reason that supermedic crews were not available.

Smith, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 21, also said that the chief taking aim at sick time is fallout from their international union voting in August to censure Butler, which publicly aired Local 21's long-simmering frustration with his leadership.

"I think again he's trying to deflect the attention from his mismanagement and make us, the rank and file, look like the bad guy," Smith said. "I've been on this job almost 19 years, and of all the emails I've seen from the chiefs, this has got to be in the top five that's caused the most uproar."

Butler wrote in the message that "some would consider the misuse of sick leave to be stealing." He said it costs about $1,000 a day to hire a firefighter to work overtime to fill in for a firefighter who is out sick.

"If a firefighter walked into someone's house on an emergency call and swiped $1,000 off their night stand, you'd could expect that employee to be fired or severely disciplined," Butler continued in the email.

Jeramiah Melquist, treasurer of Local 21, said he would ask Butler to "never accuse the 410 members of this department of being thieves.

"Bring proof that someone has actually 'abused' the sick time, and if we find that out, handle the individual case by case," he said.

SICK LEAVE ON WEEKENDS A 'HISTORICAL ISSUE'

There has been "a historical issue" in the fire department of people taking sick days on weekends, Butler wrote. But he said it "is more evident than ever because of the budget cuts over the last couple of years."

St. Paul firefighters work 24-hour shifts every other day in an eight-day period. Then they have four or six days off.

Individuals work more than 50 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays annually, according to Smith.

Butler doesn't dispute there are legitimate uses of sick leave on weekends.

"There is no doubt that firefighting is a demanding job, and that our people are exposed to more stress, pathogens, and toxics than any other force in the City," Butler wrote. "... But the vast difference between weekend sick leave use and that used during the week cannot be explained by legitimate sick leave use."

For budgeting purposes, the fire department calculates that 3.2 people will be out sick daily on average. Sick leave has been up due to some extended injuries or medical conditions and stands at a daily average of 3.5 this year, Butler said.

"That doesn't sound like a big difference, but those 0.3 add up to a lot of extra staffing that could be on the street or a lot of overtime needed to bring that staffing up to the minimum that we're looking for," Butler said Friday.

But Smith and Melquist said Butler's push to keep costs down during the last six months, so he remained within his budget, is not attributable to sick time. They said the result has been fewer firefighters on the streets, affecting response times.

St. Paul has 25 fire and rescue companies, plus 13 ambulances, and needs 108 firefighters to staff them daily.

The department's daily staffing goal is 114, which allows two extra firefighters to be placed at three stations for supermedic crews. In those places, a fire engine and ambulance can respond to calls simultaneously. Otherwise, if a fire truck is responding to a call and the same station gets a medical call, an ambulance from the nearest station has to respond and vice versa.

If firefighters are out for vacation, military leave, sick or any other reason, the department hires firefighters back at overtime rates. The amount of money in the budget drives how many firefighters can be hired back.

When Butler was pushing to keep his budget in check, particularly between June 1 and Dec. 1, there were many days when the department was at its minimum staffing of 108 and didn't hire additional firefighters to get to the 114 goal, which meant the supermedics couldn't be used, Smith and Melquist said.

The firefighter union says Butler needed to save money for three main reasons: the fire academy was overbudget, he had firefighters working special-duty assignments that weren't budgeted and had to backfill their positions on the streets, and the department had to pay for outside investigators to look into complaints that firefighters filed about workplace conduct of command staff, including Butler.

Butler responded to the union's assertions: "They can say the academy costs a lot of money -- it does. They can say we pay for investigations -- we do. We also pay for sick leave when people are not necessarily sick."

If firefighters' sick-leave use on Saturdays and Sundays were consistent with Tuesdays and Wednesdays, there would have been an extra supermedic in service 74 days this year, Butler pointed out in his email.

Copyright 2016 - Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.