Dream Job 

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"Further, there seems to be a perceived need to make sure that everyone gets their 'fair share' of overtime and holiday pay."

Recent records seem to show that not much has changed. As recently as last year, some dispatchers increased their earnings by as much as 21 percent through overtime.

A former employee has a cultural explanation for these excesses. "There is no management," says the source. "It's just a boys club, and you just can't do much wrong."

At the San Francisco Fire Department, several observers say, cost-ineffective labor practices are defended as "necessary." Low-output jobs and overtime are perceived as a right. And the protection of privilege also seems to be a tradition.

In November 1994, a retired firefighter raised serious questions about the Fire Department's labor practices. He alleged that the department's personnel office had falsified timecards, so lieutenants were paid for 40-hour work weeks, even though they actually had worked just 26 hours a week.

The retiree further alleged that Fire Department employees were paid for holidays they did not work. As proof, he provided the time sheets for himself and three other employees who were paid for working Thanksgiving, even though they did not.

The Fire Commission referred the allegations to the City Attorney's Office, which promptly initiated a vigorous investiga-tion that was run by -- none other than the Fire Department's own attorney, Art Greenberg.

The department's subsequent actions suggest that the allegations were in fact correct. In a memo to then-Chief Joseph Medina, dated March 23, 1995, the head of the Bureau of Personnel said the work week for lieutenants in personnel would be increased to 40 hours a week -- as Medina had ordered.

"I have added one hour per day to the current shift to effect an immediate increase," wrote Battalion Chief Richard Seyler. "We will continue to explore ideas for a better schedule."

City Attorney Louise Renne denied a request, filed under the state's Public Records Act, for her office's report on the alleged falsifications, claiming that "attorney-client privilege" prevents its release, unless her clients acquiesce. Renne considers the Fire Department, rather than the general public, to be her client in this matter. The department won't release the report, claiming the same "attorney-client" reasons.

Deputy Fire Chief Harold Gamble seems genuinely surprised to hear that dispatchers have been doing well by working overtime.

"I'm aware that they have to work overtime from time to time, due to someone being ill or on vacation," Gamble says but insists he was unaware that significant overtime was being claimed. He vowed to "look into" the overtime situation at the Communications Center.

And if anything is to be done about dispatching overtime, Gamble will probably have to do it. The city government's attitude toward the Fire Department's system of labor management is almost as lackadaisical as the department's own. City officials have historically deferred to the Fire Department to manage its administrative operations. In fact, the city has ignored the law by ignoring management problems at the Fire Department.

A 1995 city law requires city departments to account for their overtime spending. Under that ordinance, departments must submit reports to the Board of Supervisors each May 1 and Oct. 1, justifying overtime payments that exceed either $1 million, or 5 percent of total regular wages. The law includes Muni and the Police and Fire departments. Departments are also required to provide city administrators with analysis that would show whether hiring additional employees might be less expensive than continuing to pay overtime.

In 1995 and 1996, public records show the Fire Department paid its employees overtime money totaling 9 percent of the $89 million it paid in regular salaries. That 9 percent included staffing for the city's 41 firehouses, but it also covered the much less crucial overtime hours worked by non-suppression staff.

The Fire Department has, quite simply, failed to file the overtime reports the law requires. And the Board of Supervisors, which adopted the law, has not bothered to ask for them.

In the face of this apparent indifference, it's easy to see how the department's inefficiencies have gone uncorrected for so long. Soon, though, the decades-old system of dispatch-by-firefighter will come under siege.

Plans are under way for a new city communications center, estimated to cost $67 million. The center, which will consolidate police, fire, and paramedic dispatching services, is scheduled to open in 1999.

The city officials planning the new system want its dispatchers to be cross-trained, so they can dispatch all emergency services -- fire, police, and paramedic. And if these city officials have their way, all the new dispatchers will be civilians.

But seasoned observers consider such an outcome to be extremely unlikely. They note that the city administration has had its way so rarely with the Fire Department through the years as to be charged, quite reasonably, with sleeping on the job.