Hat tip to a friend for this one.
A member of the EMS bureau filed suit against the KCFD and the city with regard to violations of the labor laws regarding overtime.
To accommodate the fact that so many fire departments run 24 hour shifts, the labor laws have been modified with regard to firefighter overtime pay. The catch is that personnel must be fire suppression--"hose draggers" as the police so endearingly call them--as their primary job. This means that they are trained and, when applicable, certified as firefighters. When MAST people turned into KCFD, most of them were not certified FFs, nor did the majority have any interest in being FFs. Therefore they are covered by more conventional overtime rules--those work against 24 hour shifts as much OT will result from those shifts.
Read about the lawsuit from one of the many fire blogs, which files a much more detailed report than the Kansas City Star (h/t to same friend) and also note this link, which will take you to a pdf about a similar mess Johnson County Med-Act found themselves in not too long ago. Of course, Tony's Kansas City was on top of it late this morning. His comment section reveals the nuances of the case.
Just another example of how this MAST/KCFD thing turned into the clusterf*ck we thought it would...
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4 comments:
The City is very good at sawing off the limb it's sitting on.....
Yes. It is. I hear a crack even now.
T.O.:
WOW...talk about a real "OOPS" moment there, eh?
Sounds kinda FUBAR to me at this point.
Good post.
Stay safe out there.
Bob G:
You have no idea.
It gives me absolutely no satisfaction to be in a position to be able to say, "I told you so."
The Observer
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