Quebec’s Labour Relations Commission has ordered Montreal's firefighters to follow protocol and "respond in their usual and habitual manner to emergency calls" in a decision handed down Sunday afternoon.
The City of Montreal had accused the firefighters of adding an average of 30 to 40 seconds to the response times as pressure tactic in the Bill 3 pension dispute, a charge which the union hotly denied.
The two sides went before a mediator Friday in what proved to be a fruitless session before heading towards the commission on Friday and Saturday.
The commission did not rule on whether the firefighters intentionally came late to fires as a means to express a grievance, but they ordered the firefighters to return to their usual prompt methods, after seeing response times rise by over 10 per cent in July, August and part of September.
"The important thing for us is that things get back to normal, that we get back to the quick and safe response times we've had in the past. We saw a trend that had set in very suddenly in July that was maintained through August so we had to act quickly and make sure that everything got back to normal," Richard Liebmann, the Assistant Director of the Montreal Fire Department told CTV Montreal Sunday.
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Ronald Martin, president of the firefighters’ union, says no one analyzed the data to determine why the response times went up.
He has previously said summertime road construction delays are likely to blame for any later arrivals.
“We have rules. I’m never going to tell my members not to follow the law. We have a responsibility to follow the law,” he said.
Liebmann noted that most firefighters were still shown to be doing their jobs in their usual professional manner.
"The trend we noticed was in about one-third of our stations, or a bit more. The majority of firefighters were doing things they used to. We just need the union to send a message to the employees to continue doing the great job that they were doing before," he said.
Labour Relations Commisison decision on Montreal firefighters
