THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 26, 1995 TAG: 9508260380
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
Residents who must dial 911 to get emergency medical help can heave a sigh of relief: the City Council agreed Friday to pay to keep paramedics on full manpower around the clock.
At the end of a special 5 p.m. meeting, council members also agreed to pay the city's rescue workers $362,469 for two years of back overtime. That amounts to about $5,000 per worker.
The city's action satisfies a recent U.S. Department of Labor ruling and should settle a lawsuit filed by a group of Emergency Medical Services workers demanding back overtime pay.
The Labor Department ruled that the city, which schedules its paramedics for 24-hour shifts on a rotating, weekly schedule, either had to pay overtime or switch rescue workers to a 40-hour work week, which would have left ambulances understaffed from about midnight to 7 a.m. every day.
City officials had been operating under the assumption that paramedics, like firefighters, were exempt from the overtime requirements of federal law. The Labor Department said that wasn't so.
Council members had to weigh whether the city could afford the overtime tab.
City Manager James W. Rein said it will cost about $168,000 through next June, the end of this fiscal year. After that, it will cost about $200,000 a year.
The idea of scaling back paramedics' hours was not palatable to city officials, who feared it would compromise residents' safety. Nor was it favored by the rescue workers, who like the way their schedule allows them to care for their families and hold part-time jobs to supplement their incomes.
``The same quality of service will be out there, the same number of staff people will be out there, working the same shifts,'' Rein said.
``Nothing is going to change,'' said Fire Chief Michael L. Bolac, who had helped city officials develop proposals for how to deal with the dilemma. ``When the citizens dial 911, they're not going to notice anything different.''
Rein said checks to rescue workers for the back overtime pay should be out within the next several days. by CNB