City and firefighters union quietly end paramedic staffing feud

After a year of legal back-and-forth, the city of Albuquerque and the local firefighters' union have settled a divisive lawsuit.

That lawsuit alleged that union president Miguel Tittman made a backdoor deal with the City Council when labor negotiations with the administration failed.

While Tittman did not admit fault in a settlement agreement obtained by the Journal through a public records request Friday, his lawyers wrote that he “agrees that he should have invoked the impasse resolution procedures.”

“The (International Association of Fire Fighters) Local 244, that proudly represents firefighters in AFR’s rank-and-file, sees this settlement as an opportunity to put the past year and a half of litigation behind us,” Tittman said in a statement Friday. “…We hope that the City sees us as a partner rather than an obstacle when major changes to operations and working conditions are on the table.” 

The issue stems from the controversial decision by Albuquerque Fire Rescue Chief Emily Jaramillo to split paramedics between firetrucks and ambulances. Under that policy, paramedics on ambulances were reduced from two to one in order to place a paramedic on each firetruck.

Under this change, the lone ambulance paramedic is accompanied by an emergency medical technician, or EMT, while firetrucks are staffed with one paramedic and three EMTs.

Currently, the change is being piloted at five stations and has not been rolled out departmentwide.

After the change was announced more than a year ago, the City Council passed a resolution demanding that the fire department revert to the previous staffing model with two paramedics on all ambulances. The lawsuit alleges that the City Council made this decision on the advice of Tittman and that this constituted “direct dealing,” an outlawed bargaining tactic.

However, direct dealing typically occurs when an employer bypasses a union by negotiating directly with an employee rather than a union leader negotiating with a separate branch of government.

In early March, the City Council rescinded its legislation and admitted that it had overstepped, effectively ending a separation of powers lawsuit between the council and the city.

This settlement agreement puts the matter to bed.

However, by design, few people were privy to the settlement’s terms, leaving both the public and most firefighters in the dark about the conclusion of a public and divisive drama.

A secondary term of the settlement was that Tittman’s admission “not be disclosed or discussed publicly unless the City needs to respond to public comment.”

This nondisclosure aspect also applied to staff at AFR. For this reason, a departmentwide internal memo sent by Jaramillo makes no mention of the terms of the settlement agreement.

 “I am happy this is settled and we’re moving forward,” said Jaramillo in a statement Friday.   

Gillian Barkhurst is the local government reporter for the Journal. She can be reached at gbarkhurst@abqjournal.com.