History
The National Emergency Medical Services Association (NEMSA) was founded when dissatisfaction with union representation led to the creation of an all-EMS union. NEMSA's founding has always been a source of controversy, as founder Torren Colcord was found guilty in Alameda County (CA) Superior Court of fraud, using Service Employee International resources and company time to create and form NEMSA. "It's a substantial judgment for substantial wrongdoing," said Dan Martin, administrative vice president for SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. "They were on payroll, supposed to be looking out for members, and they did just the opposite. It's an example of what happens when people put their own personal ambitions above the interests of the union."
SEIU was awarded a $442,000 judgement against Colcord, and later Colcord retained the guilty verdict but had the award reduced $300,000 on appeal. .
NEMSA supporters claimed that rather than a large union that paid no attention to EMS; they wanted an EMS union. NEMSA at its height represented 5500 members.
NEMSA promotes itself as "a registered labor union and not-for-profit mutual benefit corporation that specializes in the labor representation of pre-hospital EMS Professionals such as EMTs, Paramedics, Dispatchers, Call Takers, Critical Care Nurses, Air Ambulance Flight Nurses and Paramedics, as well as EMS related support staff." NEMSA represents members in 6 states.
Read more about this topic: National Emergency Medical Services Association
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)