Northwest Indiana Discussion

Hammond firefighters union formalizing charges against city councilman
By Chelsea Schneider Kirk
(4) Comments

(one comment reads: A vote for the city's well being is a vote against the HFD union. It's this attitude that is destroying unions and justifying the Scott Walkers of America. No wonder the Wisconsin recall vote failed.)

HAMMOND | The Hammond firefighters union intends to file charges within the labor organization against City Council President Michael Opinker tied to the controversial overhaul of the city's health insurance program.

Opinker is the department's chief fire inspector and voted for the insurance overhaul.

Hammond Professional Firefighters Association Local 556 President Ed Lomeli said the charges contend Opinker went against the union by taking action against what the membership was trying to accomplish.

Council members passed the overhaul by a 5-3 vote in May against the requests by fire and police labor unions to delay the vote for more time to understand the new health insurance plans.

Lomeli said charges should be formalized by Monday. One member is initiating the charges, but other union members are expected to sign in support, Lomeli said.

The charges are then sent to the Professional Firefighters Union of Indiana and the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Opinker said he acted in the best interest of Hammond residents when he voted for the overhaul, which is projected to save the city between $2.5 to $3 million.

“I'm trying to do what's right for the people,” Opinker, D-5th, said. “I feel like I'm doing a good job. I feel like I'm doing what's right. We are saving taxpayers' money on this insurance issue and that's why I voted the way I did.”

Opinker said at least 20 of his constituents have called congratulating him for passing the overhaul.

Under the ordinance, employees can choose among three plans that range from $5.67 to $110.90 in biweekly deductions. That's compared to the $0 to $25 employees currently pay biweekly for health care.

If found guilty of the charges, Opinker may face fines or suspension from the union, Lomeli said.

Lomeli said the union was concerned about the prescription drug coverage the plans offered and wanted to negotiate a higher biweekly contribution in exchange for lower drug costs.

“All we wanted was more time to understand the three different plans,” Lomeli said.

Public sector unions are not doing organized labor any favors. You hate to see the firefighters eat one of their own.

I'm waiting for Opinker to hit back at Lomeli with counter claims. This appears to be nothing but the convening of a kangeroo court for the purpose of retaliatory aggression, disguised as a formal administrative/executive legal action. It seems Lomeli is attempting to frame Opinker as anti-local because he acted responsibly, in his role as a councilman, voting to avert deeper financial damage to the city's treasury and adjust city insurance premiums to current realities. I believe it is more abusive of union executive power.

But that's how it is with the Hammond FD union. Just like when the FD insisted upon its raises, irrespective of the frozen levy and financial harm to the city. The greater interest(s) of the city, in whole or part, will be deemed always subordinate to that of the firefighters. Talk about hubris. It is all about THEM!

Is anyone still wondering how Scott Walker twice won? Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see how much McDermott gives back during This year's contract negotiations.

What's with this War On Hammond Firemen? Don't you know that they run into buildings when everyone else is running out? Just ask them.

I know firemen can be prima donnas, but I have never noted the syndrome to be as virulent as it is in Hammond. Of course, it doesn't help that every Stacz and Stella from Whiting on down to 80/94 and from State Line to Cline Avenue always call WDEM 1230 to chime in that you simply cannot pay them enough--as long as it is not coming out of Stacz and Stella's pockets.

It makes you wonder about the good faith and clean hands of the Firefighter's union. So much for honoring democratic political processes and majority rule. Now Ed Lomeli is looking for formal support to harass and/or inflict damage on Opinker because the union lost as a result of a duly democratic vote by the city council 5 to 3. But the HFD union isn't going after anyone but Opinker.


Oddly, the last time I looked, it was Mike Opinker who was elected by Hammond resident voters to make the decisions on behalf of his district's constituents, not Ed Lomeli, who doesn't even live in Hammond. But Ed and the firefighters think nothing of sacrificing the city's resources just to ensure their financial profit. Everybody is sacrificing, but the firefighters, who, apparently, demand exemption. So much for the idea of public service.

You'd think the city was asking for their first-born. Just contribute your share to health care costs.

In my humble opinion public sector unions are dragging down organized labor. The irrational unrealistic demands of public sector unions is seriously damaging the credibility of organized labor in the private sector, of which the public sector is a mere derivative form, if not parody. Unlike the private sector, Public sector unions are paid out of tax dollars.

Maybe the GOP ideologues are right: Union representation of organized labor is a relic of the past. Maybe there are alternatives to organizing employees for the purposes of collective bargaining and enforcement of contracts.

This porblem with a fireman being an elected official, is very plain here. City employees or their family, should not run for election. O'h they say they step to one side and not vote when it involves them or their family. This isn't the correct thing to do. Every elected official should voice his or her opinion. If I vote for a certain politician, I want him to represent me, not just stand there to one side. That isn't getting true participation or representation. We have so many families that have been living off of the public, way to long. If they ever had to work in the comon workforce, they wouldn't last a week.

Wait a second here Neo, Opinker is nothing more than a puppet on a string controlled by McDermott, as with almost half of the city council. It is a McDermott rubber stamp.

As to a kangeroo court, yes, the City Council is just that. When you discuss their raises, McDermott himself negotiated that contract, no one other. As to the terms of the Health Insurance Coverage for firefighters, I think that was negotiated as well.

Alterations to the contract, benefits are to be negotiated as well. In this case the City Common Council, and McDermott failed to negotiate. McDermott would be up in arms crying if the FOP/Firefighter's came to the city and changed some term of the contract.

If there is anyone to blame, point the finger at Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr., who approved their wage and benefit package. Now that Tom doesn't need them, he can throw them out with the bathwater.

No city employee should sit on the city council.

Yeah. But for Tom McDermott, Mike Opinker wouldn't know up from down. What's more, neither would the citizens of Hammond that elected him. For that matter, the last time I looked at last November's election results, I noticed all of these so-called puppets were duly elected by citizens of Hammond - you know, those that came out to vote. Tom McDermott couldn't appoint these council members. To say nothing of candidates like Mike Repay, who defied the Big Mac and prevailed.

Meanwhile, what is it you don't understand about the city's finances? Time and again we have been informed by the Times and McDermott that the city's finances are in the red. In the red not only by way of a frozen levy, but our tax collection is about 92 percent of that owed. We are forced to dip more and more into gaming money just to stay afloat, hopefully, until the levy logjam is unblocked.

And your contention that McDermott would be up in arms is utterly false. Like him or not, last year he requested and was given authority by the common council to see if he could renegotiate the pay raises due and insisted upon by the fire union. Lomeli sabotaged the effort by manipulating the council members into a false quorum at Freddie's Steak House, and the effort proved futile. All the while, Lomeli kept asserting the city was under contract.

Despite the public embarrassment, McDermott duly honored the contract and instituted the raises. But equally, there is nothing in that still current contract prohibiting the mayor or the common council from initiating or enacting an ordinance to adjust the employee health care premiums and co-pay for insurance benefits, which, it should be added, mirror those provided to state employees. While a contract is a contract, as Lomeli repeatedly asserted, it should be remembered that despite a union contract, the status of police and firemen remains that of an employee. The citizens of Hammond didn't elect Ed Lomeli or other union reps as final authorities governing application of the city resources.

If anything, police and fire unions, as well as the remainder of the city's employees, for a long long time, enjoyed really beneficial premium rates for health care. Today, we simply can't afford it. Any contract is derivative of and subordinate to city ordinances and state law.

There is still plenty to negotiate. But the thrust of this thread is whether public sector unions are endangering, injuring and permanent damaging organized labor?

To me this is a very real concern for the union movement. It's one thing to demand compensation or remuneration from the owner/management of profit-oriented enterprises, especially since labor is the value-adding exertions contributed by employees to the product or services generating and maintaining revenue flows.

By contrast, public sector organizations are non-profit oriented and depend on taxation and/or uniform fee payments from the citizenry for support to carry on and sustain operations. Yet, the public sector unions have become awfully damn pushy of late, expecting citizens to subordinate the interest in the overall of the commonwealth to that of the union benefits.

Wisconsin was no mistake or freak occurrence. Ask not for whom the bell tolls.

This is a dog that will not hunt.

Agreed! Public sector unions need a serious reality check. Again, I said public sector unions.

Is this guy in the union?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/po ... 25471.html

I hope the city isn't forcing this blue-collar hero into choosing between gasoline to get to work or three-week old cat food for his kids by asking him to chip in $10-$20 per month for his family's health care.

The rise of government-worker unionism has combined with the broader transformation of the American economy to produce a sharp divergence between public- and private-sector employment. In today's public sector, good pay, generous benefits, and job security make possible a stable middle-class existence for nearly everyone from janitors to jailors. In the private economy, meanwhile, cutthroat competition, increased income inequality, and layoffs squeeze the middle class. This discrepancy indicates how poorly the middle class has fared in recent decades in the private economy, which is home to 80% of American jobs. But it also highlights the increased benefits of government work, and shines a spotlight on the gains public-sector unions have secured for their members. Perhaps this success helps explain why, on average, 39% of state- and local-government employees belong to unions. (Differences in state and local laws of course mean that the percentage varies from state to state; New York tops the chart with roughly 70% of state employees in unions, while many Southern right-to-work states hover in the single digits.

The emergence of powerful public-sector unions was by no means inevitable. Prior to the 1950s, as labor lawyer Ida Klaus remarked in 1965, "the subject of labor relations in public employment could not have meant less to more people, both in and out of government." To the extent that people thought about it, most politicians, labor leaders, economists, and judges opposed collective bargaining in the public sector. Even President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of private-sector unionism, drew a line when it came to government workers: "Meticulous attention," the president insisted in 1937, "should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government....The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service." The reason? F.D.R. believed that "[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable." Roosevelt was hardly alone in holding these views, even among the champions of organized labor. Indeed, the first president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, believed it was "impossible to bargain collectively with the government."

Excerpted from an article by Daniel DiSalvo.

Another factor that should be considered is that public labor unions drafted and promoted the laws in Indiana that make illegal for cities to require that police,fire and teachers reside where they work. I'd like to see that law overturned in the next legislative session. Every urban area in the state would improve if all city employees and teachers resided in the cities where they earn a living.

And every urban area in the state would benefit if certain private-sector union goons (like you, Hein) would leave them. Of course, that means some other municipality would be afflicted with your oversized presence, so there really are no winners if you're involved.

How would legislatively forcing people to live where they don't want to live help anything? Seems rather unamerican to me.