Dalton Fire District Approves Employee Handbook
DALTON, Mass.—After some changes, the Board of Water Commissioners approved the updated employee handbook during its meeting last week.
Fire Chief Christian Tobin has been working with district departments to update the district’s employee handbook, which was last updated in 2015.
The board had concerns with vacation rollovers, since any approved rollover time would need to be properly encumbered in the current year’s budget to be paid for the following year.
The district encourages its employees to take time off so that it doesn't accumulate, creating staffing issues, and to ensure the staffs’ well-being.
As the department grows, scheduling and balancing vacation time in a fair and effective way becomes more complicated, the commissioners said.
Tobin will revise the document to say that there will be no automatic carryover of unused vacation time from one year to the next unless approved by the Board of Water Commission.
The board wanted to include the option to approve rollovers because the Water Department is understaffed, and it may be necessary to do so. Adding this language allows the district to track how many hours are being rolled over.
District staff and board members also expressed concerns about the tobacco policy because it is vague and does not clearly address the use of vaping and other tobacco products beyond smoking.
District buildings are smoke-free zones. That was voted on 50 years ago, Water Commission chair Jim Driscoll said.
The board decided to have Tobin develop a new, separate, tobacco-free workplace policy that clearly defines what is prohibited and ensures compliance with state law.
Appendix A presents a breakdown of the fire department's wages and stipends based on the type of employee.
Driscoll recommended having a meeting the following week to iron out the details of the wages and stipends, but the board chose not to do that and instead approved Appendix A as a separate document, not included in the employee handbook.
There were concerns about Appendix A because it included fire department wages and stipends.
Tobin warned against postponing the approval of this document for several reasons, mostly a delay would be disruptive for current employees, who need to know what to expect in terms of wages, benefits, and policies.
Additionally, it's important to clarify these things for new employees and per diem workers and to establish clear expectations for everyone.
"You can see I get upset because the people here they're important. They make this work," Tobin said.
Tobin said he wants to avoid having to retroactively apply changes because it can cause complications and issues with overtime pay and other payroll matters.
"The problem is when people talk about retroactively paying people under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act…especially people who have come in and work additional shifts, that means their overtime rate is low," he said.
That means that you have to go back to the treasurer and figure out what the discrepancies were "because you're trying to take something and retroactively apply it, which is always not a good business practice," Tobin said.
"...there's been things where I've tried to address some of our wage issues that hang over this organization that are quite serious," Tobin said.
Driscoll said that as long as the information in the document was budgeted for during its annual town meeting in May, he would feel comfortable approving the document but still would not want it included in the handbook.
"As long as you're ensuring us that the money's in there. The biggest concern is that we can't afford to keep running in the red. We can't because we'll lose everything," Driscoll said.
"So, I mean, there has to be a balance, some kind of a balance between what we put out and what we take in."
The district took over the ambulance services three years ago when the firefighters' association gave it up. The district has been trying to determine the cost of operating the ambulance.
Driscoll said that the firefighters' association had an ambulance system that was working, but it was not financially possible to run it anymore.
The district is in its fourth year that it has had the ambulance, and it has been a learning curve for everybody, he said.
"I just don't want to move forward so fast that we lose sight of what we're trying to accomplish here," Driscoll said.
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