Emergency Workers Conjure Ghost of Rodney Dangerfield at Council Meeting

BY DYLAN CAMPBELL

Representatives  of the city’s emergency workers borrowed a page from the late Rodney Dangerfield’s playbook when they complained to City Council members on Thursday: “We get no respect!”

“We are not given that treatment of respect,” griped Vincent Variale, president of the EMS officer’s union at a preliminary budget hearing of the Committee on Fire and Emergency Services at City Hall, arguing that emergency workers were not only poorly paid but also lacked such basic tools as GPS technology, locker rooms and leadership staffing.

Variale’s beefs were backed up by the testimony of Michael Greco, Vice President of the Uniformed EMT’s Paramedics and Inspectors who said that their co-workers were forced to use papers maps, work for less pay and change in rooms with people of the opposite sex.

“They love this job but they don’t feel as appreciated as they appreciate the job,” said Greco about his co-workers, adding that the working conditions make it hard to retain employees.

Variale said that while a recent fire department report cited a seven percent attrition rate, the numbers were even higher because it didn’t consider workers who had moved on to become firefighters.  He said the attrition rate was closer to 15 percent.

Virale said that EMS workers are considered civilian employees instead of uniformed employees, which means they get paid less than firefighters.

“The message is, don’t work for this company,” said Variale.

Greco said he had “5,000 members who can’t afford to live in the city they serve.”

Though fire department’s representatives had testified earlier that  technology had improved and had embraced the 21st century “proudfully” by installing a mobile navigation system in ambulances, Variale countered that the technology wasn’t up to snuff.

Variale contended that paramedics had to use their phones to navigate and are blamed when they arrive late to a scene. He said  up-to-date GPS systems would “significantly help address the response times.”

and Greco said these concerns are not shown in the preliminary budget and that the 321 million allocated in total is significantly less than they need.

Greco said that these needs were not reflected in the proposed budget, which would require a dramatic “reevaluation in hundreds of millions of dollars… to make EMS a vital service for this city.”

Councilman Fernando Cabrera declared he was “baffled” by what he had heard and called for a study of these conditions and needs.