In what may be record time, a fire chief and union solved a major problem brought up by a consultant’s report and cited in this newspaper editorial.
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On July 3 Emergency Services Consulting International issued a report to the Minneapolis City Council saying that firefighters had been averaging a little less than eleven 24-hour shifts of sick leave each year or 261 hours, while civilian employees of the department averaged 292 hours. For a fire chief that’s a problem, especially when the local paper made note of it in an editorial looking at what ails the department (Star-Tribune Editorial: Sounding an alarm on city firefighting).
We are happy to report that just a couple of weeks later Chief John Fruetel has already cut this apparent sick leave “abuse” by two-thirds. That’s a pretty remarkable job by a fire chief. You would think that Chief Fruetel would be up for fire chief of the year this week at FRI.
How did he do it? It turns out that the chief did what the consulting firm failed to do, he divided the three year totals by three and came up with the correct annual average sick leave usage. The Minneapolis Firefighters Union, which has been very vocal about the department’s staffing cuts, also did the math.
(Emergency Services Consulting International senior vice president Kent) Greene said that shortly after a Star Tribune editorial published that statistic on July 17, he got a call from Fire Chief John Fruetel wondering where Greene got his numbers. Greene said his office reviewed the statistics and discovered the error.
The 261 sick leave hours for firefighters and 292 for all personnel represented three-year totals, Greene said, and the study’s authors had neglected to divide the data by three. Firefighters actually averaged 87 hours of sick leave per year. Since most firefighters work a 24-hour shift, that represents about 3.6 sick days per year.
In a letter last week to Greene that included a spreadsheet detailing the error, Mark Lakosky, the union president, wrote, “For a department that has suffered low morale because of unfriendly political bosses, the last thing we need is malicious lies about how we performed our jobs.”
Joe Mattison, secretary for the union, also told reporter Furst the report’s findings that sick leave use spikes on Saturdays is also a bit misleading, though it’s what at least one council member is now focusing on.
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Also on STATter911 …
- Washington Post supports DC Fire & EMS Department shift change. Editorial board calls it ‘A shift for the better’. – December 26, 2011
- Fireground audio: Mayday with firefighters trapped & injured at Minneapolis church fire. Details on the escape through the fire. – May 29, 2012
- Firefighter/dispatcher falls asleep during 911 call. TV station has audio from Montgomery County, Maryland. – May 22, 2012
- IAFF Local 36 rebuttal to Washington Post: ‘A shift toward sleep deprived firefighters.’ – December 30, 2011
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These studies always tick me off, and not just because I’m a firefighter.
1) Please compare our M-F 0900-1700 leave vs. other people’s leave. I’ll bet it’s better. We need time off on nights and weekends just like everyone else does — except they get it as a matter of course. Not many other professions need to get time off (not just sick leave) on nights and weekends, because they already have it.
2) piggybacking on #1: if you have a sick child or other family member, It’s hard to find someone to care for them during the day, let alone after hours.
3) If you go to work sick, you might expose your coworkers, but your under-performance that day probably won’t risk anyone’s life. Not so with firefighters.
4) Unless you’re an elementary school teacher or a healthcare worker, you are probably not exposed to sick people on a daily basis. We are, and sometimes we get sick from them.
5) If you go to work sick, you’ll be at home that night resting, and getting better. We won’t. We go to work at night, and get little or no rest, and stay sick.
6) If you work a desk job, and you sprain your leg playing some basketball with the kids, you go to work. We can’t, and have to take sick leave.
7) Sick leave use is heavily affected by morale. A guy who loves his job will work with bumps and bruises and a lingering sniffle. Firefighting is one of the most stressful occupations in the country. Without good leadership, those stresses build up and not only increase illness, but make the employee less able to deal with illness and injury, and it costs the city sick time.
8) The penalty for vomiting at most workplaces is embarrassment. The penalty for vomiting in your air mask while in a deadly atmosphere is death.
You can’t trust any consulting firm. Their job is to skew the figures and make the City look good and everyone else bad.
I wonder if this consulting firm will use this bit of publicity in their advertising campaign for future jobs.
Of course. Their new campaign can cay “Only 33.33% of our statistics are not checked for accuracy!”
I just read the comments on in StarTribune. It seems that people “reading” that article have a hard time with comprehension. The first few commenters, clearly cannot grasp that the number has to be divided by 3 to be accurate. Looks like they are only worried about slamming the FD and its’ union.
So, will the editorial be retracted? Corrected?
Read through the comments on the editorial, what a bunch of ignoramuses.
I won’t be holding my breath for a front page correction and admission of screwing up.
I also like the consulting company blaming the FD. Isn’t part of their job making sure they have the facts straight so they can make reasonable suggestions?
I bet you they correct the editorial Mark. Will it get as much play as the original? Probably not. Remember if the orginal stats were correct it seems like something to be concerned about.
Consultants really don’t seem to pay attention to their reports. The report commissioned by Ann Arbor, MI from ICMA stated their current manpower was adequate. What they didn’t realize was they were working off old numbers that did not reflect attrition from the last year. Didn’t take long for people to notice the ICMA had “endorsed” filling 10 open positions.
some of the posts reminds me of a supervisor in dispatch i had who required you to come into work if you called in sick so “she” could decide “if you were too sick to work”
when a dispatcher with the flu and a 103deg. temp dragged herself in for “her sick determination” and gave it to an entire shift triggering 10 days worth of overtime, they tried to fire her until she produced a signed memo from the supervisor requiring a “sick show up” by anyone calling off
she wanted to fight the termination but could not find the master memo because it mysteriously disapeared from the memo book…(i gave her my copy because i was in the habit of making copies of all “interesting” memos) and she was let off but in IMHO the supervisor should have been dicliplined for the stupid (of many more) rule in the first place
my point is, people get sick and some people abuse sick time. but some money tight agencys make up stupid rules sometimes and release information that the media inflates to do a story. I’m glad the chief was able to clear that up for his department
Here’s what I don’t get. I get slammed for using sick leave I rightfully earn. If I don’t use it I get slammed when I retire because the pay out for my unused sick leave is “too much.” Maybe Mr. John Q. Public and the jurisdictional administrators would be happier if we didn’t earn any sick leave. Wait a minute, they’d find something else to slam us on…