EMS War Goes Beyond Boots on the Ground

The Emergency Medical Service’s requirement that employees wear protective boots that are designed to safeguard against a multitude of potential hazards has taken an odd twist—or sprain or fracture—according to its uniformed unions.

Pat Bahnken, the president of EMS Local 2507 of District Council 37, which represents Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics, and Vince Variale, who negotiates for officers as the head of DC 37 Local 3621, say the boots have been responsible for a variety of foot injuries suffered by their members. They claim they also pose the potential for ambulance mishaps because they can become wedged between the accelerator and the brake pedal.

In essence, they argue that EMS and the Fire Department are putting lives in jeopardy in the name of greater safety.

EMS Chief: Unions Had Input

EMS Chief-in-Charge John Peruggia disputes all of those claims, as well as the unions’ insistence that there were other boots available, at lower cost, that would have addressed safety concerns without creating new hazards. And notwithstanding an arbitrator’s decision less than a month ago finding that EMS and the FDNY had violated union contracts by failing to negotiate an agreement on the new policy with them, he said the field-testing of the boots by three dozen employees included the participation of members of the unions’ executive boards.

WHO’S SQUEEZING WHOM?: Emergency Medical Service union leaders Pat Bahnken (left) and Vincent Variale accuse Fire Department officials of forcing their members to wear protective boots they know are both uncomfortable and potentially hazardous, but EMS Chief-in-Charge John Peruggia insists the boots are the one model that fully safeguards employees at the scenes of incidents and were field-tested by some members of the unions’ boards. The two sides also dispute whether employees who have complained about the boots have been subjected to retaliation. Asked about the assertion by Local 2507 safety officer Izzy Miranda that the Pro-Warrington boots are utilized primarily in urban search-and-rescue operations and no other EMS in the nation deploys them, Mr. Peruggia responded, “We’re the unique system here. We’re the largest and busiest EMS operation in the country.”

In many other jurisdictions, he said during a Sept. 22 phone interview, EMS workers are responsible only for transporting sick and injured patients, as opposed to the “rescues in rescue operations and extrications from motor vehicle accidents” that are performed by personnel here.

It became clear, during an interview with EMS union officials, that this issue is part of a larger grievance they have with the agency and the FDNY. Both unions have long sought to bring salaries closer to those received by Firefighters and officers, with only incremental progress made in that direction. Mr. Bahnken, noting that firefighters have a choice from among seven types of footwear while his members are limited to two kinds, “the bad and the worse,” said of FDNY officials, “They have decided that a predominantly minority and female workforce should be treated like indentured servants, not civil servants. My members refer to EMS as the FDNY Plantation.”

FDNY spokesman Steve Ritea expressed astonishment at Mr. Bahnken’s rhetoric, questioning its relevance to the issue at hand. “We took these steps for one reason,” he said of the protective gear distributed throughout the department: “safety for all our members is the priority, whether they’re firefighters, EMTs or Paramedics.”

The department’s chief spokesman, Frank Gribbon, also weighed in on Mr. Bahnken’s comments, which he characterized as “inflammatory,” adding that it was “beneath a union leader to make such references.”

‘Improved Their Job Conditions’

Countering the Local 2507 leader’s claim that since EMS was transferred from the Health and Hospitals Corporation to the Fire Department 14 years ago, all that’s changed has been “the lettering on the side of the ambulance and the color of the uniforms,” Mr. Gribbon said, “EMS is a better-trained, better equipped workforce. They have protective gear they didn’t have before. We have new EMS facilities to work out of; the work conditions have improved.”

The department has also, he continued, undertaken a pilot program under which a group of EMS employees are assigned to 12- hour shifts, with a corresponding reduction in the number of days they are required to work each year. Chief of Department Sal Cassano ensured that ambulance personnel were provided with carbon monoxide monitors in their vehicles as a safety measure, Mr. Gribbon added, and “we’ve included them in Medal Day to enhance the appreciation for the work they do.” (When the change was made this year, Mr. Bahnken complained that his award-winning members, who previously would have had their own spotlight but in a decidedly smaller setting, would be overshadowed by the firefighters being honored for heroism at the event.)

To some extent, the hard feelings between the department and the union stem from the manner in which the boot change was implemented. While there were extensive discussions about the new boots, in the end EMS ordered and implemented them without getting union approval. The two unions sued, arguing that this was a violation of a contract agreement reached early in the decade creating a Quartermaster system, under which any change in equipment had to be agreed to by the unions.

City officials asserted that the move to the Pro-Warrington boots did not meet that criterion and amounted to nothing more than a change of shoes. Arbitrator Gayle Gavin blistered that claim as “silly,” stating in her ruling against the FDNY, “The Department was not making a cosmetic change in the listed footwear item, it was substituting something—the [Personal Protective Equipment] boot, a part of the PPE ensemble—for the work shoe or boot.”

She also pointed out that the boots originally, under a July 2006 command order, were intended to be worn only when responding to specific types of incidents, but when they were made mandatory 26 months later, workers were ordered to wear them at all times. The expanded use, the union officials said, had increased the likelihood of discomfort to a degree that could not have been anticipated when they were field-tested for shorter periods of time.

‘Chiefs Don’t Climb 5 Flights’

Mr. Bahnken said EMS management had minimized the seriousness of the problem because “the superchiefs all wear them. And we say, ‘And how many times do you go up and down five flights of stairs?’ ’’

The union officials, who noted that Pro-Warrington is the distributor for all FDNY footwear, contended that there were three other types of boots that would protect their members without causing the same problems: an ATAC Storm Boot, Rocky First Med, and Haix. All of them retail for significantly less than the Pro-Warrington boots, and they said that while the FDNY receives a discount because of its large purchase, the other boots would be cheaper even without a likely discount from their manufacturers.

Chief Peruggia acknowledged that the other boots met National Fire Protection Association standards regarding protection against blood-borne pathogens EMS workers are exposed to in the field, but said they would not safeguard against “every possible hazard that they might be exposed to.”

“They’re going into environments where there’s broken glass and nails,” he said, contending that the Pro-Warrington model was the only one available that would not be penetrated by those objects no matter how worn the boots were. He said they also offered protection against oil and grease that were commonly found in the road after motor-vehicle accidents.

Variale: Hasn’t Been a Factor

Mr. Variale contended, however, that during his 14 years at EMS, “I’ve never had problems where fluid has soaked into my shoes or my body.”

While the boots were fully implemented late last summer, Mr. Bahnken said it was not until this year that the unions received widespread complaints about how uncomfortable they were once heat built up inside them (he said they also offer little traction when there is snow or ice on the ground). And he pointed out that his members are required to wear them at all times, even though they can change out of the heavily insulated jacket and pants that they wear for protective reasons. The flexibility on those parts of the uniform, he said, was practical: heat builds up so intensely in the bunker gear-like uniforms that if workers kept them on all the time they would have to be taken out of service periodically to guard against dehydration.

Chief Peruggia quarreled with that claim, pointing out, “They have other items on the ambulance that would protect them against blood-borne pathogens, like gowns.”

Shortly after the boots became mandatory on Sept. 8, 2008, Mr. Miranda said, “We started getting complaints. They know these boots are causing injuries, but they just ignore it.”

Mr. Peruggia dismissed that claim, saying there had been no reports of injuries or, as Mr. Bahnken alleged, cases where the more-cumbersome boots created a driving hazard.

He acknowledged there had been numerous reports of discomfort.

Manufacturer’s Error

“The manufacturer admitted to us what they probably should have done was fitted everyone individually for their boot size,” Chief Peruggia said. That was subsequently done, he continued, “so people having difficulty with their boot could be refitted.” In some cases employees needed special boots that took longer to produce.

He said that “less than a dozen members have been accommodated with an alternative boot.”

The EMS union leaders contended the problem was far greater, but that many of their members were unwilling to complain directly to the agency because they were concerned that either they would be assigned to restricted duty, which would take away their opportunities to earn overtime, or it would hurt their careers.

Mr. Bahnken presented pages containing 540 signatures—close to 25 percent of the EMS workforce—complaining about the Pro-Warrington boots.

Chief Peruggia denied that anyone had been assigned to restricted duty because they said they were unable to perform their regular duties wearing the new boots.

‘Can’t Refuse an Order’

Asked about adverse personnel action being taken, he said, “If someone is found while on duty to not be wearing the boots, they would be ordered to put them on, and if they refused, they would be disciplined for failure to follow an order.” That treatment is no different, he said, than in any other instance in which a member of the service refused an order.

EMT Peter Capetanos disagreed. He wore the new boots until they caused a skin allergy known as contact dermatitis, and slightly more than a year ago, he was placed on modified duty at his base, Station 14 at Lincoln Hospital in The Bronx. Last September, he spoke to this newspaper about the problem and was featured in an article in which a Local 2507 spokesman, Bob Ungar, said the problem was widespread but “the Chief of EMS doesn’t want to hear about it.”

Mr. Capetanos said last week that eventually an acceptable substitute boot was provided, but it became contaminated with blood at the scene of an incident. He submitted it to his supervisors for decontamination, but claims it was returned largely uncleaned. He said he refused to wear the boots, triggering a series of modified assignments that began at the EMS warehouse.

Recurring 30-Day Suspensions

In March, he said, he was shifted to EMS headquarters at 9 Metro Tech in Brooklyn, working in close proximity to Chief Peruggia, and claimed that officers who reported directly to the Chief referred to him as “Mr. Newspaper Boots Guy.”

Two months later, he said, he began a series of 30-day suspensions without pay, the maximum penalty that can be imposed short of firing. It has become a kind of ritual, according to Mr. Capetanos: “They ask, ‘Are you gonna wear the boot?’ and I ask to be placed on a reasonable accommodation, and they say, ‘You’re suspended again.’ ’’

He has filed a complaint with the state Labor Department—the EMS unions have one pending there as well —about the boots, but he is convinced that he is being punished because “they’re mad at me for going to the press about an issue that should have been resolved the minute it came up.”

What is especially strange is that his most-recent suspension, imposed as of Aug. 26, continued in effect despite an order by Ms. Gavin in her decision that the Fire Department “rescind and expunge from all records any and all disciplinary actions taken against any EMS member covered by this collective-bargaining agreement” for boot-related issues.

Given that ruling, Mr. Capetanos said, “Why do I continue to still be on suspension?”

FDNY: Labor Dept. Upheld Us

Fire Department officials responded that Mr. Capetanos's case was not covered by the arbitrator’s ruling because the boots he was wearing were not the Pro-Warringtons. They also noted that the state Labor Department had ruled against him on the decontamination issue, finding that the boots had been properly cleaned after they became covered in blood; Mr. Capetanos countered that he has a case pending on the matter with the Industrial Board of Appeals.

“No member of EMS has been formally disciplined for refusing to wear the PPE boots,” one FDNY official said.

Someone should tell that to Robert A. Wallace, the FDNY’s Assistant Commissioner for Investigations and Trials. The final paragraph of the suspension letters he has been sending Mr. Capetanos for the past five months always states, “This suspension is based upon your continued acts of insubordination of failing to be compliant with the rules of the EMS Command by refusing to wear your FDNY issued PPE boots.”