Labor dispute threatens to derail Whatcom County's ambulance service

| DANNY GAWLOWSKI | THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

• Medic One

• READ THE AGREEMENT

  To read highlights of the 2005 Emergency Medical Services agreement, including who created and signed it, click here.

On Wednesday, Oct. 1, six firefighters from Whatcom County Fire District No. 7, which covers Ferndale, are set to start 10 months of paramedic training at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle so they can staff that new unit.

Their union, the International Association of Fire Fighters, is trying to stop them because of an ongoing dispute between the local unions representing District 7 employees, Local 3855, and Bellingham Fire De-partment employees, Local 106.

Since Whatcom Medic One began in 1974, every unit has been staffed with Bellingham Fire Department paramedics. For more than two years, these locals have been fighting over who has the right to staff the fifth paramedic unit. The plan residents voted to fund stipulated that Ferndale firefighters would staff that new ambulance. On Sept. 24, the IAFF ruled in favor of Local 106. Local 3855 members will receive a letter from IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger this week that will specify whether training at Harborview will violate the ruling, and what kind of fines or penalties they can expect if it does, President Mark Kuhl said.

Members of Local 3855 will meet Oct. 4 to decide whether they should follow the decision, ignore it or leave the union, Kuhl said.

“Our union has a huge decision to make,” Kuhl said. “I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen. I’m under the impression they’re still going (to Harborview).”

If they don’t, the consequences for the Medic One system — and millions of taxpayer dollars — could be dire, county Deputy Administrator Dewey Desler said.

The county collects the sales-tax revenue from every city in Whatcom County per an agreement used to implement the EMS plan, Desler said. If the plan isn’t followed, those agreements collapse and the funding is lost. Money for Medic One is expected to run out in 2012, and Desler said he hopes another voter initiative won’t be needed to fund the system. If it is, getting voters to support funding the system without the prom-ised fifth unit in Ferndale could prove difficult, Desler said.

“If this measure is brought to the voters again, it’s going to fail,” District 7 Fire Chief Gary Russell said. “We’ll be cast right back in the same position we were in 2004-2005. All we’ve done is postpone this train wreck for about five years.”

Bellingham Mayor Dan Pike said he continues to support the EMS plan and hopes the unions can resolve their dispute. He said he will work with either local union, depending on the dispute’s resolution.

“My management will deal with whichever local is appropriate,” Pike said. “The labor folks need to get their things sorted out. I just want to make sure we go forward with the countywide agreement.”

THE PLAN

This isn’t the first time Bellingham and the county have been at odds over Medic One.

Five years ago, the system was in danger of fracturing after the city of Bellingham threatened to stop pro-viding ambulance service outside city limits.

City and county officials were faced with offering separate ambulance services — an expensive prospect they couldn’t afford, Desler said.

Instead, in 2004-05 they came together with fire district chiefs and Medic One personnel to keep the sys-tem intact.

They devised the Emergency Medical Services plan, which would keep the four Medic One units and would gradually phase in a fifth unit. The fifth unit was to be county-based and focus on meeting increased demands for service in the north county.

The plan called for that fifth unit to be staffed with “employees of Whatcom County Fire District 7.” District 7 was chosen because it had financial stability and enough experienced, professional firefighters to train to become a paramedic unit, Russell said.

They finished the plan in July 2005, and every member of the group that devised it endorsed it with their signatures, including Local 106 president Rob Wilson and its secretary-treasurer, Rich Kittinger.

Every elected official in Whatcom County agreed to support this plan, Desler said.

“That’s the first time that’s happened in our community,” Desler said.

In November 2005, 67 percent of voters approved the sales tax measure that would fund the plan and pre-serve the Medic One system.

IMPORTANT COMPROMISE

Choosing a fire district to staff that fifth unit was an important compromise and was crucial in getting county voters to support the tax measure, Russell said.

It gave the districts — and thousands of county residents — some protection should Bellingham threaten to pull ambulance service from the county again, said North Whatcom Fire and Rescue Chief Tom Fields, who was part of the group that devised the EMS plan.

If Bellingham threatened to pull back, the county would have one unit running as well as a precedent on how to train others, Fields said.

“The fifth unit was supposed to be county-staffed so that we’re never held hostage again,” Fields said. “We’ve got to get Whatcom County independent.”

LABOR DISPUTES

The dispute between Locals 106 and 3855 arose shortly after the tax measure passed.

As the agreement was being hashed out before going to voters for funding, Wilson and other Local 106 members wrote letters and e-mails to Desler and County Executive Pete Kremen raising doubt about how the fifth unit would integrate with the others.

They were also concerned about how the plan would address labor issues such as ensuring that the potential District 7 medics have the same wage scale as the current Bellingham Fire Department medics.

But Kittinger and Wilson signed and effectively endorsed the EMS plan. Wilson said they did so assuming the labor issues would be worked out later.

Desler said the planning sessions didn’t address the labor issues. However, he said the government offi-cials who assembled to devise the EMS plan would normally leave labor issues to be worked out in bargain-ing negotiations, not the planning process.

In March 2006, Local 3855 sent a letter to Russell expressing interest in taking on the paramedic work for the fifth unit. Local 106 objected and filed a work-jurisdiction dispute, claiming that 3855 violated IAFF bylaws.

It claimed that 3855 was intruding on its “established work relationship” of being the county’s exclusive provider of paramedic work, thus setting off two years of combative meetings over which union owned the work.

In June, the unions went before an arbitrator to resolve the fight. The arbitrator ruled in August that Local 106 had a right to the work because they have done paramedic work in Whatcom County for more than 30 years. By expressing interest in doing paramedic work, Local 3855 members were intruding on that right and violating IAFF bylaws.

The arbitrator noted that Local 106’s Wilson and Kittinger had been part of the work group that devised the EMS plan that included District 7 staffing the Ferndale ambulance. But he said they had no authorization to relinquish 106’s right to the work, despite their signatures on that plan.

The IAFF upheld this ruling Sept. 24. Kuhl said the IAFF has no means of blocking the firefighters from training but can levy unlimited fines and penalties.

“There’s nothing in the bylaws that specifies a limit to fines,” Kuhl said.

WHAT’S NEXT

On Oct. 7, the Whatcom County Council will vote on spending about $330,000 to help offset the costs of training the firefighters at Harborview.

Harborview, though, is only the first step for the prospective paramedics. After they train for 10 months, they must do field training with professional paramedics.

They would have to go through Local 106 members to get that training here. But 106 says it won’t train 3855 members, meaning District 7 would have to look to other counties for that training, Russell said.

Wilson said he hopes that blocking the Harborview training will allow the EMS plan to be reconsidered.

“It was a plan,” Wilson said. “It needs to change and accommodate different growth issues and needs. There’s no need to create a separate entity.”

He favors a plan that will allow any professional firefighter in the county to become a paramedic, so long as they’re part of the Whatcom Medic One administration and join Local 106.

Fire district chiefs balk at this, saying it cedes too much control of ambulance service in the county.

“Everything in this plan has been achieved except for this one issue,” Russell said. “This public mandate has been subverted by a group of people that has no accountability.”

Desler said that it’s imperative for the Harborview training to continue as planned.

“These are all good people,” Desler said. “They should be our heroes. There have been disagreements as to who will have the work. But as a matter of public policy, we should move down the road with District 7. That’s what we promised the voters and that’s what they approved.”

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