Village Fire Department Employees Disciplined for Abusing Sick Leave

Oak Lawn Village Manager Larry Deetjen revealed that two members of the Oak Lawn Fire Department—a firefighter and an administrative staff member—both were disciplined two weeks ago for abusing sick leave.

In two separate December incidents, the firefighter and the administrative employee were found to have faked being sick.

An angry Deetjen said in his report during Tuesday’s village board meeting that appropriate action had been taken against the firefighter and the administrative employee by Fire Department Chief George Sheets, along with the village’s human resources director and labor attorney.

“I wish I could say it was isolated, but I don’t believe it was isolated,” Deetjen said. “Sick leave is insurance. It’s to make sure that if an employee in this organization has an illness, and hopefully that does not occur, they are protected and their financial condition is sustained.”

The issue of overtime in the Oak Lawn Fire Department is a sore spot with the village board after firefighters ran up $900,000 in overtime in 2010—$650,000 over last year’s allotted of $250,000. Some village board members attributed the excessive overtime costs to firefighters abusing their sick leave.

“It’s not a vacation day and it’s not a day that you take at your advantage as opposed to your employer’s advantage, and it’s not a day that you use that ends up triggering overtime,” Deetjen continued. “We have to call in another associate and pay that associate time-and-a-half. That’s wrong. That hurts the entire organization.”

Deetjen called the overtime figures unacceptable. In the first quarter of 2011, the village’s fire department has already rung up $200,000 in overtime. He attributed the fire department’s chronic overrun of overtime to “arcane and restrictive language” in village firefighters’ labor contract.

“It has no relevance in today’s society as far as paying for public safety in our community,” Deetjen said.

The village manager also took issue with a statement made to Patch in November by Scott Tsilis, the president of the International Fire Fighters Local 3045. Tsilis, an Oak Lawn firefighter, had called some village board members’ accusations of sick-time abuse during budget talks

Tsilis could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday night.

“If we don’t see improvement in the (fire department’s) overtime budget, which we monitor on a daily basis; I’m sad to say that every day we have to be looking at that and it’s not fair,” Deetjen said.

Deetjen said after the board meeting that other village employees brought the matter of the two fire department employees’ abuse of sick time to the village’s attention, triggering an investigation.

The village was poised to have a formal hearing per the firefighter union’s labor contract. The hearing was scheduled to take place but the firefighter and civilian employee approached Sheets and asked to negotiate a settlement.

The firefighter was suspended 30 days without pay, amounting to 10 24-hour shifts. Neither Deetjen nor Sheets would comment on the punishment meted out to the administrative employee.

“Our presentation of evidence was quite substantial but did not get to that level,” Deetjen said. “Both were disciplined consistent with the acts they engaged in. They used the time for something other than being sick.”

Sheets called the incidents “a personnel matter” and said the discipline of both employees fell within the guidelines of village policy. The fire chief would not comment on whether sick-leave abuse was widespread throughout the department, as Deetjen alleged in his village manager’s report.

“The only thing I’m going to say is that we have two incidents and I’m hopeful that it’s isolated,” Sheets said. “I think from the perspective that we addressed it we issued appropriate discipline and we’re moving on. As far as I’m concerned it’s over.”

The fire chief added that measures are being taken to negotiate a new contract with union leadership that expired on Dec. 31, 2010, including keeping the village fire department’s overtime costs in line.

“A lot of this has to do with the contract negotiated before I arrived,” said Sheets, who was appointed fire chief in July 2009. “I inherited it and I have to deal with it. We’re working with the labor union to work out some type of conclusion to address the overtime costs and we’ll continue to work in that vein until we get some relief.”

Deetjen did point out in his manager’s report that 25 of the village’s 83 members of the firefighting force had perfect attendance records in 2010; others had taken one day or less.

“We got good people in the department who come to work and do their job,” Sheets said. “That’s all we expect everyone to do. We’ll continue to work with the good people that we have. We have an excellent department but we still got some work to do.”