911 Dispatchers In Santa Clara County Threaten To Strike

[alp227]

Source: KPIX/CBS 5 San Francisco

Dozens of union emergency dispatchers rallied in San Jose Thursday to say they may strike against Santa Clara County over mandatory overtime, but the county’s top official said that could trigger a court injunction to block it.

Members of Service Employees International Union Local 521 showed up to support the union’s insistence that the county stop requiring its 61 communications dispatchers to work overtime to fill 73 full-time positions.

The county also has failed to recruit new qualified workers and hold onto veteran employees who are leaving for better jobs elsewhere, the union’s chief elected officer Luisa Blue said.

Requiring 911 dispatchers to work hundreds of hours of overtime a month while the county seeks to hire new dispatchers for its understaffed Communications Department amounts to an unfair labor practice, Blue said.

Read more: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/08/22/911-dispatchers-in-santa-clara-county-threaten-to-strike/

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They've got a point. Overworked 911 dispatchers = sh*t will happen. Something those county govt managers who've probably never spent a minute working in the settings they oversee do not know!

[the_sly_pig]

1. its certainly not only Santa Clara county... its all over the country

All the 911 dispatch centers at which I've worked, the retirement benefits for dispatchers are not equal to police and fire benefits. Additionally, the dispatch center workforce is probably 70% women. It says a lot. But this is just one of the byproducts of under-taxation.

To boot, many of the dispatch centers are operating with ancient technology.