AMR prepares for union talks

By Timothy R. Homan/ Daily News Correspondent

Friday, October 20, 2006

NATICK -- About 30 employees of American Medical Response picketed outside management offices for the national ambulance service company yesterday, demanding a halt to alleged efforts to weaken their new union.

The demonstration, comprising off-duty employees, started at 7 a.m. at 4 Tech Circle and continued until 2 p.m., according to James Gambone, a regional representative for the Sacramento, Calif.-based National Emergency Medical Services Association.

"Nobody's on strike yet," said Gambone, a paramedic with AMR for two years. He said that while NEMSA intends to work with management to resolve the dispute, the union also reserves the right to hold an unannounced strike.

"It's just our first day," he said, adding that the union will consider more public demonstrations if AMR doesn't respond in a timely fashion to their complaints.

In charges filed earlier this week with the National Labor Relations Board, Gambone claims AMR is violating the rights of its workers by denying "union access to union bulletin boards" and failing to give due notice before making changes that affect "working conditions, work locations and employee schedules."

The company also prevented workers from contacting their union representatives and intimidated employees, the union alleges. The charges claim management told employees that asserting workers' rights would mean "things are going to get worse for them."

"We look forward to sitting down with NEMSA and bargaining in good faith," Eric Berthel, a spokesman for AMR, said in a telephone interview. "The union is within their rights to picket."

Berthel added that AMR, which is based outside Denver and has about 17,000 employees, had received a letter from NEMSA to initiate negotiations and the company is in the process of gathering information for those meetings. He said he does not foresee a strike.

NEMSA represents 1,000 AMR employees in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire and provides ambulance services in Framingham, Natick, Newton, Waltham, Wellesley and Waltham, according to Gambone.

In early October, NEMSA became the new union for AMR employees after 13 years with the International Association of EMTs and Paramedics.

"The new union needs to be respected," said Jim Misercola, a NEMSA representative for the East Coast and an AMR employee for the past three years.

He said AMR has demonstrated a "pattern of abuses" and the picketing is meant to draw attention to issues that have "fallen on deaf ears."

Picketing is scheduled to continue today.