Independent union challenges ATU at American Medical Response

In the next month, 532 American Medical Response (AMR) ambulance workers in the Portland metro area will have a choice to make: Stay with the local union that has represented them for nearly two decades, or leave to join a startup union headquartered in Sacramento, California.

Ambulance work is changing. Thirty years ago, “ambulance drivers” picked up bodies and took them to the hospital — or the morgue. But life-saving medical technologies have evolved, and today, training requirements for “emergency medical services (EMS) professionals” include having an associates degree and 65 units of continuing education per year.

Paramedics and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) are professional lifesavers who take many of the same risks as police officers and firefighters. But they feel underpaid and under-respected compared to their public sector counterparts, and compared to the hospital workers who take up where they leave off.

To close this gap, some have formed unions. Portland-area EMS workers joined Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 757 in 1988. Since that time, in every union contract they have won improved pay, benefits and working conditions.

Nationally, ambulance service is mostly nonunion. A few local governments provide ambulance service directly, but most grant exclusive contracts to private companies.

At ambulance companies like AMR, unionized units are few and far between, and are divided among at least a half-dozen national unions. The largest of those is the International Association of EMTs and Paramedics (IAEP), which is a subdivision of the 1.8-million-member Service Employees International Union.

Just under two years ago, a pair of SEIU staffers serving an IAEP unit in Northern California came up with a plan to leave SEIU — and take their unit with them as a new stand-alone union for EMS workers. While still employed by SEIU, they called the unit’s stewards and elected officers to a meeting in Livermore, Calif., where they pitched their proposal in a 30-page PowerPoint presentation. The group quickly gathered member signatures and filed for an election to determine which union had the most support in the unit.

SEIU, stung by the betrayal, fought tooth and nail, but lost the election. It also sued the two staffers — Torren Colcord and Tim Bonifay — for fraudulent concealment, misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of fiduciary duty. The case goes to trial Feb. 24 in Alameda County Superior Court.

Colcord and Bonifay christened their union the National Emergency Medical Services Association (NEMSA).

Since then, they’ve made a bid to go national, chiefly by “raiding” already-unionized units affiliated with other unions. Colcord, NEMSA’s president, told the NW Labor Press the union now has 3,200 members in 13 units, five of which were taken from other unions. All but about 800 of those were in the original Northern California SEIU unit.

In December, a Fort Wayne, Ind., unit of about 100 AMR employees became the latest to join NEMSA, after having belonged to the Machinists Union two years prior.

“We don’t go out and solicit,” Colcord said. “We just answer the phone.”

That’s what happened in the Portland-based ATU unit, Colcord said.

The Portland unit had formed its own independent association before, in 1996. But after 18 months in which the new association was unable to get an acceptable contract, a majority of members voted to rejoin ATU.

As NEMSA got under way in California, ATU critics within the Portland unit found out about it online, and began a drive to switch unions. On Jan. 19, they filed a request for a union election to see which union the members prefer.

AMR paramedic Carl Lemmon, a NEMSA supporter, says ATU saved his job once when he was facing termination. And while wages, benefits and working conditions have improved steadily in ATU, Lemmon thinks they could improve more. He compares Portland-area compensation to that of Northern California.

Lemmon is not alone. The last contract ATU negotiated contained a 30 percent wage increase over three years — and still passed by only five votes.

Will NEMSA, with a fledgling staff and fewer resources, be able to do better? Ron Heintzman, an international rep for ATU who has been assigned to bargain the unit’s next contract, doesn’t think so. Heintzman agrees that EMTs and paramedics are underpaid. Paramedics make $55,000 a year after 13 years, but EMTs still start at less than $30,000 a year under the current contract, which expires in May.

Winning labor concessions from giant corporations is no picnic. As longtime president of Local 757, Heintzman developed a reputation as a skillful strategist and aggressive bargainer. ATU often resorted to the courtroom or ballot box when companies balked at the bargaining table, and amassed an enviable record. AMR wasn’t paying for training; ATU won a reversal, and back pay. AMR wasn’t giving adequate rest time; ATU applied political pressure and AMR changed its policy. It was a felony to assault fire or police officers, but not paramedics; ATU got a law passed in Salem to add EMS workers.

Still, Heintzman says, there was always a group within the unit that felt emergency medical services workers should have their own union.

That’s NEMSA’s chief selling point, repeated over and over in the new union’s appeals. And it’s true that most Local 757 members are bus operators.

It’s a strategic debate — not over whether EMS workers need a union, but over what kind of union.

In conversations and on the unit Web site, www.atuems.com, pro-ATU workers and staff say NEMSA compares unfavorably to ATU. ATU Local 757 owns its own office, has the backing of its 180,000-member parent union, and as an AFL-CIO affiliate, is part of a labor community that can offer political and economic support. NEMSA is an untested stand-alone union. It’s a go-it-alone union whose national headquarters consists of a borrowed suite in a Sacramento law office. And, by raiding already unionized units rather than starting with workers that don’t yet have a union, NEMSA has made enemies of other unions.

NEMSA president Colcord says EMS workers need a union that understands their specialty. He says he understands EMS issues because he has worked as a paramedic.

Local 757 attorney Susan Stoner counters that the AMR unit already elects officers from among the ranks — and those EMS workers participate in bargaining their contracts, helped by Heintzman and others with full time union expertise.

“When you actually sit and look at the issues, it’s always the same,” Stoner said. “When you fight with management, you fight the same battle over and over. It doesn’t matter what arena you’re in — it’s all about control, and it’s all about money.”