Public Employee Press

Grievance Victory
EMS crews kick off hazardous boots

When the Fire Dept. forced Paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians to do their lifesaving jobs in clunky overweight boots, the union filed a grievance and an arbitrator ordered management to let the ambulance crews shed the hazardous handicap.

Starting in 2006, the FDNY required members of Uniformed EMTs and Paramedics Local 2507 to start wearing a new boot that was a pound heavier and almost two inches longer than their old EMT boots.

Many of the rescue workers called the awkward new Personal Protective Equipment boots “clown shoes,” but the new requirement wasn’t funny. The extra size and weight caused numerous injuries to the members, who often have to climb several flights of stairs while carrying an injured New Yorker.

One of the worst injured is 22-year veteran Paramedic Keith Rock, who fell on a staircase while he was helping a Bronx patient and ruptured tendons in both of his legs. The one-time bodybuilder is undergoing painful physical therapy and doctors have told him he can never carry a patient again.

The oversized boots were also a danger for ambulance drivers, who sometimes bumped the gas pedal when they tried to brake.

The PPE boots “are designed for the Urban Search and Rescue teams,” which deal with steel and concrete rubble in building collapses, said Israel Miranda, Local 2507’s health and safety coordinator. “Nowhere in the country are these boots used by EMTs and Paramedics.”

More than 500 members of the department signed petitions that Miranda circulated, but the Fire Dept. ignored the ambulance crews’ health concerns.

The local filed a group grievance in May 2007, charging that the FDNY was violating the Hospital Technicians contract and its Quarter-master Agreement, a written list of equipment that management cannot change except through negotiations with the union.

At a Sept. 2, 2009, arbitration hearing, where the local was represented by former DC 37 Assistant General Counsel Joseph Barrett, the city claimed that the Quartermaster Agreement is merely a generic list of items and that management has the discretion to change style or vendor.

Arbitrator Gayle Gavin ruled that the Fire Dept. violated the contract by requiring the PPE boots rather than the EMS boots that are listed in the Quartermaster Agreement.

Gavin ordered the FDNY to rescind all orders mandating the hazardous boots and to “rescind and expunge from all records all disciplinary actions” taken for refusing to wear PPE boots.

Members can now wear any standard work boot that is puncture and water resistant. The FDNY also recently completed a hazard assessment that the local agreed with and will have 100 members test new boots. Barbara Terrelonge, assistant director of Research and Negotiations helped to negotiate the award.

“This is a tremendous victory for our members,” said Local 2507 President Pat Bahnken.