Wednesday, February 15, 2006

The City of Paducah is refusing to negotiate a new labor contract with its firefighters until a potentially multimillion dollar lawsuit is resolved, Mayor Bill Paxton said Tuesday night.

Current and former firefighters,
including the president of their local union, recently filed the lawsuit to collect. on back pay they claim the city owes them.

Paxton called for the suspension of negotiations after commissioners were briefed by city attorney David Denton in closed session. Denton then publicly stated that he would "vigorously defend the case" that in the "worst-case scenario" could cost the city $6 million.

Firefighters contend in the lawsuit that the city has been violating Kentucky law "by failing to include various elements of pay in (their) regular rate of pay."

Barry Carter, president ofInternational Association of Firefighters Local 168, was ill and unable to attend the meeting, but he said by phone afterward that he watched it on television. He said he didn't see the rationale in the city's choosing to suspend negotiations because of the lawsuit.

"I'm disappointed that they're taking that stance when we're just trying to figure out the disparity in the overtime pay," Carter said. "I think that it's two separate issues, and it's sad that they're playing games, elected to do it like that.

"They're trying to act like we did something wrong by exploring through the legal system how to resolve this."

Paxton and Denton said the issue could have been resolved if the firefighters came to the city and tried to work it out before suing. Fire Chief Redell Benton said the "firefighters feel like they need to look into this ... , It'd be nice to sit down, but they chose to go on with the lawsuit. That's their right."

Both Benton and Human Resources Director Herschel Dungey said the city's action to suspend negotiations was fair. "You don't negotiate with that hanging over your head," Dungey said.

The suit was filed for the firefighters by Washington, D.C., attorneys Thomas Woodley and Douglas Steele. Neither returned messages seeking comment left with a secretary at their office Tuesday afternoon.

The lawsuit's plaintiffs are 36 current and former firefighters. Paxton asked Denton to read all their names out loud so the viewing audience would know who they are. Carter said that was fine, because "we're not trying to hide anything." He went on to say that almost all the firefighters will be represented in the lawsuit, and that the 36 mentioned were simply the first wave of names.

The lawsuit was filed Jan. 26 in McCracken Circuit Court. Its claims extend as far back as Jan. 26, 1991, a 15-year period that's the most allowed under the state's statute of limitations for breach of contract, Denton said.

According to the lawsuit, the firefighters are also seeking other types of lost salary, including sick leave buy-back pay and pension shortages.

Denton said this type of case is not generally resolved quickly. In his prepared statement, he also said the dispute was not unique to Paducah.

"A key factor in the dispute is that the City of Paducah, and many other Kentucky cities, have throughout the time period in question always computed and paid wages to the firefighters by following a methodology that was acknowledged by the Kentucky Labor Cabinet and was accepted as correct by Local 168 and its membership," Denton said.

Carter said firefighters were unaware of the potential lost wages and simply want money that should have already been paid to them. He said the lawsuit was filed after the overtime-pay issue had been raised during the past two rounds of contract negotiations. The last round ended two years ago, and the two sides had been in talks on a new pact until Paxton suspended them.

If similar lawsuits in other Kentucky cities are an indication, Denton's estimate at the multimillion dollar cost isn't far off.

Carter said that during negotiations two years ago, similar lawsuits were pending in Louisville and Lexington courts, and the union opted to wait and see what happened in those cities. According to the Courier-Journal newspaper in Louisville, a circuit judge sided with firefighters in September 2004 and ordered the city to pay millions of dollars in overtime. The Louisville Fire Department employs more than 500 people, compared to Paducah's 62. However, the Paducah force has been trimmed from 89 in 1989, meaning former firefighters could step forward and say they were shortchanged.

Bill O'Brien, a negotiator hired by the city to take the place of City Manager Jim Zumwalt in the negotiations, was instructed by Paxton to tell the firefighters today that negotiations would cease.

Carter said he would tell them the same. He said the firefighters intended to keep the issue "quiet as long as we could," partially because it's still unclear how the Paducah firefighter contracts addressed the issue, and whether Paducah is in the same situation as Louisville.

"Keep in mind that Louisville has some different issues," Carter said. "We don't know how much of ours is in line with theirs."

Still, Carter said it's worth looking into locally.

"If something's being done wrong, it's being done wrong. You can't stick your head in the sand."