By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — Members of Mayor Susan D. Menard's administration this week openly acknowledged what the firefighters union has been saying all along — the contentious layoff of 11 firefighters last month isn't saving the city any money, as was intended.

The city might even be spending more money than it would have if no one were laid off, said Planning Director Joel Mathews.
“At best there were no actual savings,” said Mathews. “It will be break-even or come with a slight cost, but not a lot.”
The city had hoped to net savings in salaries, health care benefits and pension contributions as a result of the layoffs, Mathews said, but the gains have been eaten up by increased overtime costs.
Mathews calculates the layoffs are driving up overtime at the rate of about $10,000 a week — $54,000 since cuts took effect on March 8 — but Capt. Gary Lataille, treasurer of the International Association of Firefighters Local 732 — contends the city is still lowballing the figure.
In the six weeks that have passed since the layoffs took effect, Lataille said the city has spent $65,649, racking up overtime at a rate that will easily reach the $200,000 mark by the end of the fiscal year. Moreover, Lataille said there is another $55,000 in hidden overtime costs that the city is logging as compensation time, a move the IAFF contends is the result of an unlawful directive issued by former Chief Kenneth Finlay in January. Union members will have to be paid in cash for the compensation time if their pending grievance of the order is successful.
“I've been tracking the figures for how much overtime has been the direct result of the layoffs since day one,” said Lataille. “Their figures are tainted, but to actually hear them say the city is even breaking even is huge for us.”
The mayor threatened to lay off some 60 firefighters in February as part of a plan to compensate for anticipated cuts of $3.6 million in state aid. The threat prompted the IAFF to seek a court order blocking the layoffs, arguing they violated “minimum manning” provisions of their collective bargaining agreement and posed a risk to public safety.
After a weeklong hearing, however, Associate Superior Court Justice Susan McGuirl ruled that the city could lay off up to 18 of its 132 firefighters. Because seven positions were already vacant due to retirements, the order essentially cleared the way for the city to make 11 layoffs. Two firefighters have since been recalled because there have been two more retirements since the order was handed down, including that of Finlay, now chief of the neighboring North Cumberland Fire Department.
Calling the city's fiscal status “extremely perilous,” McGuirl said firefighters are as vulnerable to layoffs during an economic crisis as workers in any private sector job. But the ruling stopped short of dismantling the minimum manning provision of the IAFF's collective bargaining agreement with the city by requiring that the WPD maintain a constant workforce of at least 112 platoon firefighters, plus a chief and an office secretary.
Citing the cost-neutral economics of the layoffs, Lataille has petitioned the City Council to introduce legislation to recall the remaining laid off firefighters, a request the City Council is apparently taking seriously. At the request of the council, Mathews said, he is working up a detailed spreadsheet on the financial impact of the layoffs on the city.
Though there have been few problems with maintaining adequate manpower, Interim Fire Chief Gary Lataille (brother of Michael), made it clear that he would welcome a return to full staffing, saying, “More manpower is always easier.”
But Mathews did little to encourage the notion that the administration will call back firefighters any time soon. With the city facing a combined deficit of $5.4 million in School Department and municipal accounts, the city may be looking to the Woonsocket Fire Department for even more cuts, and officials would not want to recall firefighters for a brief time only to lay them off again early in the coming fiscal year, he said.
Mathews said that in order for the city to obtain savings in personnel costs from the Woonsocket Fire Department, however, it will have to address the minimum manning provisions of the collective bargaining agreement. The city could do that by closing one of its five fire stations, thereby reducing the amount of firefighting equipment on hand in the city. Minimum manning does not impose an overall floor on the staffing level at the fire department, but certain quotas for each engine and ladder truck in the department's active fleet.
While the city had hoped the legal battle with the IAFF would have addressed minimum manning, the chief precedent it established was that the city had the power to make layoffs, said Mathews. At the time of the lawsuit, there was also a bill pending in the General Assembly – initially proposed by Gov. Donald Carcieri as part of a money-saving package of legislation to help cash-strapped municipalities like Woonsocket – to abolish minimum manning on fire departments. It appears that proposal will go nowhere, however.
Nevertheless, the city continues to attack minimum manning from another angle. While the legal battle in Superior Court is over, the city and the IAFF are still fighting over the unresolved union contract for the current fiscal year in arbitration. The city is now challenging minimum manning in that forum, according to Lt. Steven Reilly, president of the IAFF.
But the IAFF is arguing that the city unlawfully placed minimum manning on the agenda of the arbitration by introducing the issue at the eleventh hour, said Reilly. Minimum manning was never part of collective bargaining before talks broke down, so procedurally it should not be a part of the arbitration, due to reconvene in late June, said Reilly.
In the meantime, Reilly says it is unconscionable for the city to maintain the status quo in the face of now-uncontested evidence that the layoffs were a failed experiment in fiscal prudence.
“At best it's a wash and the city isn't saving any money,” said Reilly.  “In the business world, if you lay someone off and it's not saving you any money, wouldn't you bring them back to work?”