‘Spotty’ attendance for firefighters union head

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This article was published 22/04/2018 (2342 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Firefighters union president Alex Forrest’s claim that Winnipeg taxpayers were getting a good deal when footing the bill for his salary for more than a decade due to his work on city committees isn’t supported by his attendance record.

Documents obtained by the Free Press show Forrest hasn’t attended a single City of Winnipeg and United Fire Fighters of Winnipeg joint safety committee meeting since at least December 2006. During that time there have been 59 meetings, with records listing Forrest as a “worker member” for each of those committee meetings.

The Free Press has only obtained records from December 2006 to present, so is unable to confirm whether Forrest showed up for meetings before that time period. For every meeting the Free Press has a record for, it is indicated Forrest was absent.

When told of Forrest’s lack of attendance, one former member of the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service, who previously sat on committees with the union head and asked not to be named, wasn’t surprised.

“Alex’s (Forrest) attendance on committees was always spotty at best. Unless there was something to specifically attract his attention, some specific issue that interested him, he wasn’t likely to attend,” he said.

The Free Press’s attempts to interview Forrest were limited to a brief exchange of text messages. Forrest wrote that he was, “not the chair in that committee anymore. I have another firefighter I made chair of that committee. That’s why I have not been there.” He declined further comment.

Andy Burgess, who served as UFFW president prior to Forrest, said he attended the joint safety committee when he was union president. However, he indicated that depending on what was going on in the department at the time, some members might miss meetings.

The joint safety committee is one of eight city committees Forrest has pointed to in past interviews with the Free Press as justifying taxpayers picking up the tab for his salary — as stipulated under Article 20 of the City of Winnipeg and UFFW collective bargaining agreement.

Forrest came under fire in January when it was revealed the city had been paying 100 per cent of his salary, including benefits and pension payments, without reimbursement from the union, since Forrest became union president in 1997. Forrest later admitted he also collects a second paycheque — a top-up representing the partial wage of a city firefighter — directly from his union.

In 2014, that deal with the city – which the city administration says it is unable to find a paper trail for – was renegotiated, with the city agreeing to pay 60 per cent of Forrest’s salary for however long he remains union president. Other civic unions in Winnipeg pay for their union president’s salaries by reimbursing the city.

Critics of the arrangement have said the firefighters’ union should be responsible for their own bills. Mayor Brian Bowman has indicated he wants the deal scrapped as soon as possible, but Forrest has countered that won’t be before the next round of collective bargaining in 2021.

In an effort to explain the unusual arrangement, Forrest sat down with the Free Press in January, saying the city was obligated to pay his salary for all the work he did on city committees. He said his work on the eight city committees listed under “Article 20” of the collective bargaining agreement stipulated the city had to pay his salary.

“I was on so many committees from 1997 to the present that by 2014 I was almost 100 per cent off-duty doing committee work. Everything we have done has been through this agreement,” Forrest said in January, referencing “Article 20” of the collective agreement.

He also mentioned a 2007 house fire, which led to the death of two city fire captains, that he said triggered near constant work on health and safety issues in the department.

“In 2007, we had an event that literally stopped everything in the fire department. We had the death of two fire captains at a fire. There were some safety issues. We had to re-change everything in the fire department because the policies led to the deaths of those two individuals,” he said.

“We sat on everything from provincial committees, to health and safety committees, to general operating guidelines. We changed the whole department. That took two to three years of my time, non-stop. The city paid for that.”

Burgess, who was nearing retirement at the time of the 2007 fatal house fire, and who was also on the joint safety committee, remembers issues stemming from the fatal fire were discussed at the meetings.

Forrest joined the fire department in 1989, working as a full-time firefighter for eight years. He previously told the Free Press he continued to work some active duty shifts up to 2014, while indicating to other media outlets the date was 2012. A freedom of information request, filed through the city clerk’s office, seeking documentation on the amount of time Forrest spent in active duty between 1997 and 2014, was denied.

A separate freedom of information request found the city had no record for how much time Forrest spent working outside Winnipeg from 1997-2017. In January, the Free Press reported — based on information culled from his Twitter account — that he’d taken at least 60 out-of-town trips since 2014.

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca

@rk_thorpe