Belleville Fire Fighters file for binding arbitration for contract

On Dec. 4, Belleville Fire Fighters, who belong to the Michigan Association of Fire Fighters (MAFF) union, filed for mandatory binding arbitration, under Public Act 312 saying its attempt to negotiate a contract with the city has failed.
Under Act 312 the city will have to pay the expenses of the arbitration.
All the paid-per-call fire fighters in the 103-year-old department are union members, except for Fire Chief Brian Loranger.
The union president, Fire Lt. Brian Blackburn, said fire fighters have being trying to negotiate a contract with the city since they organized the union more than two years ago, without success.
It all started when fire fighters asked for their training wage to be upped to $10 an hour from the $5 an hour paid. Paying less than the minimum hourly wage of about $7.70 an hour at the time was technically illegal, Lt. Blackburn said.
Blackburn said the city asked for a wage analysis and wage comparisons and the fire fighters gave it to them. “It showed what that change would do to their budget,” Blackburn said.
Blackburn said the issue came before the city council and they voted to raise the training wage to minimum wage. Blackburn said the fire fighters were promised that when the next city budget was prepared the council would raise the training wage to $10.
“When that didn’t occur, that’s when we organized,” Blackburn said.
Union vice president Jason Martin said the fire department was the last department of the city to organize.
“We didn’t want to do it, but we didn’t have a choice,” Blackburn said. “They weren’t taking us seriously.”
The Michigan Employee Relations Commission handled a mail-in election, requested by the city. It took longer, but after the votes were counted and the majority was found to favor a union, the fire fighters organized under MAFF, the same as Van Buren Township, Sumpter Township, and Augusta Township.
The local union organized, electing Blackburn as president, Martin as vice-president, Colette McClinton as treasurer, and Matt Loveland as secretary. All the officers, along with the MAFF negotiator, now Fred Timpner, made up the union’s negotiating team.
The city retained labor attorney John Clark and with City Manager Diane Kollmeyer the two made up the city’s negotiating team.
Blackburn said the city kept putting the union off to start negotiations. He said they would set a date and then the city would call to cancel and reschedule. Then one of the two city negotiators wasn’t available and they’d cancel again.
Meetings were at city hall.
Blackburn pointed out that City Manager Kollmeyer annually goes to Florida to be with her husband for an extended time during the holiday season, which “blows two months of our negotiations.”
Martin said they have been trying to negotiate for 24-25 months and Belleville does not have a huge department – 18 now.
Blackburn said when Sumpter Township fire fighters organized it took two months to negotiate a contract.
Martin said the city proposed the city fire fighters stop running medical runs and have Van Buren Township or Huron Valley Ambulance do the medical runs. The city said their response time was too slow.
Blackburn has been keeping track of the response times and he said for the last two years Belleville response has averaged 8 minutes. He said HVA on five or six calls per month took 15 minutes to arrive and sometimes the ambulances came from Monroe County and Scio Township.
Martin, whose full-time job is with HVA, said the union did the financials and found it would cost $60,000 to put first-responders from HVA in the city. He said the city fire fighters cost a quarter of that, or less.
“No more than half,” Blackburn said, adding some of the fire fighter response is less than 8 minutes, but, “I can’t control the trains.”
The union proposed a two-person duty crew shift M-F from 7-5, Blackburn said. “The city rejected it because of the costs and wouldn’t even discuss it any further so we agreed to remove it, to move negotiations forward,” Blackburn said.
Martin said the department is looking to expand the First Responder certification of fire fighters to Basic Life Support.
“We were committed to doing more,” he said, adding those with advanced licenses maintain them at their own expense. It would not be a cost to the city.
Blackburn said Wayne County HEMS was very excited to hear what Belleville was planning since it improves patient care.
He said 90% of the fire runs are medical, with 3-4% fire runs, 3-4% accidents, plus other assorted runs, like the gas spill at Citgo two weeks earlier. He said 30 gallons ran down Fifth Street and around the corner, but the fire department was able to stop it, with the help of city DPW crew, and clean it up. Apparently the tanker driver left his truck while the gas was being delivered and someone drove over the pipe, dislodging it.
Blackburn said the fire fighters feel like the “red-headed stepchild” and get no respect at city council meetings.
“We’ve tried to be cordial, respectful, and quiet” during the negotiations, Blackburn said.
“We’ve been working with the state mediator since January and he cannot understand why we aren’t making progress,” Blackburn said.
“It’s not difficult. We’re not asking for things. We’re not unreasonable,” he said.
Blackburn said in October, just before the election, the city agreed to everything except the pay and insurance.
He said fire fighters are seeking essentially what Sumpter Township fire fighters have, similar to Affleck, which helps after an injury as a fire fighter.
Blackburn said he’s an engineer at Ford and the insurance wouldn’t be to pay his Ford wages if he’s injured, for example, but to keep him afloat. He said when he got hurt on his fire fighter job it turned out the city didn’t have more than workman’s compensation coverage for him.
“If I have long-term disability, I’m hosed,” he said.
Martin said the insurance requested would pay for his treatment if he was injured on this job.
“We left in October with the feeling we’d have this handled by the first of December,” Martin said. “But then the city didn’t want to meet.”
MAFF negotiator Fred Timpner gave the city team an ultimatum and set a deadline of Dec. 4.
“By that Friday night there was no response,” Blackburn said, “so I told people and also Chief Brian Loranger, out of respect.”
They informed the assigned state mediator, who was disappointed, but understood.
Timpner called attorney Clark and, finally, on Tuesday, Dec. 8, Clark returned his call and asked him not to go to binding arbitration.
“We’ve been doing this for two years,” Blackburn noted.
“All the progress in early October,” Martin said. “They were hoping to wait us out.” He said he believes the city just wanted to delay so long that the fire fighters would give up the idea of a union.
“We’ve got 18 guys and gals that want to run calls,” Martin said.
“All we wanted was to have an agreement on wages, go from $5 to $10 in training,” Blackburn said.
He said he believes the city manager is working at the direction of the mayor. “We saved her house in the middle of all this going on,” he said of Mayor Kerreen Conley, whose house caught fire in 2014.
“And, the council doesn’t know what’s going on,” Blackburn said, pointing out at least two council members voiced surprise at information on negotiations.
“We don’t want to explain to people why we didn’t speak up,” Martin said. “We don’t want to make a big drama deal out of this, but the citizens need to know.”
On Monday City Manager Kollmeyer said she just heard about the Act 312 filing and didn’t know anything about it, but, a negotiating session is set for Thursday.
Attorney Clark said on Monday that everyone is trying hard to settle the contract. He said the union had a business agent change where another MAFF agent came on board and that delayed negotiations for three to four months.
And then, he said, the state mediator who has a lot of other cases offered them a session the week of Thanksgiving or the second or third week in December. They will be meeting on Thursday, Dec. 17.
Clark said the fire fighter negotiators have to meet late in the afternoon because they have regular jobs. He said the schedules of seven people have to be accommodated.
“We are just down to a few things. It always comes down to money issues,” Clark said, noting if they get things settled the Act 312 request could be withdrawn. He said the Michigan Employment Relations Commission has to approve it.
He said MERC could hold up approval because it is filed when there is an impasse, but since they are meeting they are still negotiating.