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CHAPTER 12 - DEFIBRILLATORS
The Commission has held that any increase or change in an employees'
job duties, safety, or workload is a mandatory subject of bargaining,
including the impacts of the implementation of a defibrillation program. 1
The City argued that the Arlington case is distinguishable from the facts in
its case because the defibrillators in Arlington were used exclusively by the
EMT's and, thus, the impact on job duties, safety, and workload would
have been far more appreciable than here, where the fire fighters defer to
AMR once the ambulance arrives on the scene. However, although the
defibrillators are not used exclusively by the City's fire fighters, the facts
demonstrate that the City's decision to implement a defibrillation program
required the training of bargaining unit members in the use of the
defibrillator, changed the fire fighters' job duties, and increased their
workload. Therefore, consistent with its decision in Arlington, the LRC
concluded that the impacts of the City's defibrillator program is a
mandatory subject of bargaining.
§ 1 EQUIPMENT, WORKLOAD & SAFETY
Issues affecting workload and safety are mandatory subjects of
bargaining, whereas issues concerning the level of public service to be
delivered are permissive subjects of bargaining. 2
To determine whether an employer made any changes that affected a
mandatory subject of bargaining, the Commission has historically
balanced the unions’ interest in bargaining over safety and workload
issues with the employer’s interest in making the core management
decision of what level of services to provide. 3 A topic does not become a
mandatory subject of bargaining merely because an employer’s actions
marginally or indirectly implicate safety or workload issues. 4 Rather, the
topic must directly and significantly affect safety or workload to outweigh
the employer’s interest in making a core management decision. 5
Applying the above-referenced standard, the Commission has determined
that staffing per piece of fire fighting equipment while responding to an
alarm is a mandatory subject of bargaining to the extent that it raises a
question of safety, because the number of firefighters who engage a fire
has a direct and significant impact on safety. 6 In contrast, minimum
staffing per shift, staffing per piece of equipment while awaiting an alarm,
and staffing per piece of equipment while responding to a mutual aid call
where no safety issue exist, remain core management decisions, because
Commonwealth of Massachusetts