Well, it finally made one newspaper in NJ. Falck USA subsidiary Lifestar USA pulled a short-notice shutdown of Lifestar Response of NJ's on Jan 15th, 2014. Workers said they had nine days notice. Herald News of North Jersey paper carried a drive-by phone interview of Lifestar USA spokesman, who spun the living crap out of the reporter. To read the article, you would think only 30 people would lose their jobs. But if you apply the skeptics 180-degree, back azimuth correction, you would get a lot closer to the truth---meaning ALL BUT 30 were laid off. The best number I come up with is 154 EMS workers laid off---EMTs, coach drivers, and thankfully, IMO, all of the dispatchers, although two actually did a respectable job.
The article ran in the herald news Jan 16 or 17, but the best part is that they have a website for the paper too, northjersey.com, and people posted very revealing comments in the comments section under the digital form of the article.
Dispatch reportedly turned off the electricity around 3 pm on Jan 15, and crews made their way back. Lifestar NJ left the place trashed. There was a period of lockout.
let's back up. Workers found out about the change of ownership by coming off shift, to find people from GEM Ambulance (Newark, Del.) handing out job applications for GEM. They were told that 80 people would be kept, so imagine workers surprise when GEM actually hired only 30--and not all of them the best EMTs available.
An educated guess is that the Danish experience in investing in New Jersey probably cost them, conservatively, $18.4 million. There was a management contract to maintain Lifestar managers for a period of time they did not disclose, but turned out to be three years. Lifestar NJ packed up its records, and took them who knows where. At least one ex-worker, who was there many years, has already filed a claim with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The last two years have been particullarly contentious between management--all the way to Denmark--the their labor force in NJ--because management was not only tone-deaf to legit grievances, but deliberately oppressed workers, with shift changes, mandatory overtime, screwing up paychecks, withholding overtime pay in some cases until the workers brought in the NJ state Wage and Hour division. Management also reportedly failed to live up to the letter of their contracts with hospitals. The official company line that Lifestar NJ managment fed workers was that Lifestar NJ lost all its nursing home contracts except one---and obviously all around the same time. It may have been pushback by the nursing home industry to punish bad management-- some of the regular patients were being picked up 4 hours late! In one case, dispatch was informed that one facility had just been victimized by an armed gunman, and dispatch continued to send unsuspecting crews to the facility!
Hopefully, the full story will come out.
Falck had been pushing hard to bring in inexperienced EMTs for $11/hour, and hired several that couldn't lift more than 100 lbs, resulting in multiple injuries to their partners, until the complaints became too loud for management to ignore. People flat out refused to ride with the offenders. Thus, they were rapidly bringing down the quality in the once-proud Lifestar NJ crews. It used to be a place people wanted to go to. Now 154 mostly really good EMS workers are out in the street. And BTW, Falck will fight tooth and nail over every dollar of unemployment. Consider this a warning to all the other 4,000 or so workers for Falck USA. They want to cut labor costs, at your expense.
The article ran in the herald news Jan 16 or 17, but the best part is that they have a website for the paper too, northjersey.com, and people posted very revealing comments in the comments section under the digital form of the article.
Dispatch reportedly turned off the electricity around 3 pm on Jan 15, and crews made their way back. Lifestar NJ left the place trashed. There was a period of lockout.
let's back up. Workers found out about the change of ownership by coming off shift, to find people from GEM Ambulance (Newark, Del.) handing out job applications for GEM. They were told that 80 people would be kept, so imagine workers surprise when GEM actually hired only 30--and not all of them the best EMTs available.
An educated guess is that the Danish experience in investing in New Jersey probably cost them, conservatively, $18.4 million. There was a management contract to maintain Lifestar managers for a period of time they did not disclose, but turned out to be three years. Lifestar NJ packed up its records, and took them who knows where. At least one ex-worker, who was there many years, has already filed a claim with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The last two years have been particullarly contentious between management--all the way to Denmark--the their labor force in NJ--because management was not only tone-deaf to legit grievances, but deliberately oppressed workers, with shift changes, mandatory overtime, screwing up paychecks, withholding overtime pay in some cases until the workers brought in the NJ state Wage and Hour division. Management also reportedly failed to live up to the letter of their contracts with hospitals. The official company line that Lifestar NJ managment fed workers was that Lifestar NJ lost all its nursing home contracts except one---and obviously all around the same time. It may have been pushback by the nursing home industry to punish bad management-- some of the regular patients were being picked up 4 hours late! In one case, dispatch was informed that one facility had just been victimized by an armed gunman, and dispatch continued to send unsuspecting crews to the facility!
Hopefully, the full story will come out.
Falck had been pushing hard to bring in inexperienced EMTs for $11/hour, and hired several that couldn't lift more than 100 lbs, resulting in multiple injuries to their partners, until the complaints became too loud for management to ignore. People flat out refused to ride with the offenders. Thus, they were rapidly bringing down the quality in the once-proud Lifestar NJ crews. It used to be a place people wanted to go to. Now 154 mostly really good EMS workers are out in the street. And BTW, Falck will fight tooth and nail over every dollar of unemployment. Consider this a warning to all the other 4,000 or so workers for Falck USA. They want to cut labor costs, at your expense.