Critics
EMS workers in Portland, Oregon are critical of NEMSA because NEMSA disclaimed their bargaining unit when NEMSA could not negotiate an acceptable contract for their workforce. NEMSA walked away from approximately 500 members, leaving them unrepresented. "Everybody was upset," Charlie Savoie said. "A faction figured maybe we'd been had, and began collecting petitions to file for new representation by the Teamsters."
Former NEMSA member Edward Gavin, Jr. filed a lawsuit against NEMSA in 2011 claiming NEMSA had breached its duty of fair representation owed to Gavin under law. Gavin alleges "On July 8, 2011 Mr. Gavin found out that at the Step Two grievance hearing he had briefly attended, NEMSA had withdrawn his grievance rather than allowing a decision to be made. The withdrawal of the grievance at the Step Two stage of the grievance process prevented the grievance from being taken to Step Three of the process, arbitration. As a result of the grievance being withdrawn by NEMSA, Mr. Gavin lost the opportunity to have the NEMSA stewards decide whether to take the grievance to arbitration, he lost the opportunity to appeal any decision by NEMSA not to take the grievance over his termination taken to arbitration, he lost the opportunity to have his grievance taken to arbitration, and he lost the opportunity to contest the termination of his employment. The NEMSA representatives had lied to Mr. Galvin after the Step Two hearing, when they led him to believe that the grievance hearing had been litigated to conclusion and awaited a decision. Mr. Gavin had never agreed to the withdrawal of the grievance.
EMS workers in Northern California and New England are critical of NEMSA because of a two year union leadership dispute. Leaders of this anti-NEMSA movement called themselves "the Transition Team" and are quoted on an anti-NEMSA website as saying "NEMSA - NEMSA is corrupt & undemocratic.. It is run more like a despotic personal business" and issued a 35 page preliminary report of the problems they found with NEMSA and NEMSA's Executive Director Torren Colcord. Later this Transition Team would abandon NEMSA and create a new union, as a local affiliate of AFSCME called United EMS Workers Local 4911
Former NEMSA employees have also been critical of NEMSA. Former NEMSA Employee Jim Misercola wrote a letter describing why he no longer works for NEMSA in which he states "My resignation is due to the extreme philosophical and ideological differences with NEMSA. NEMSA is no longer the organization that I once tirelessly promoted. Furthermore it is my opinion that NEMSA is badly mismanaged by its current President Torren Colcord" . Former Employee Jason Herring stated in a letter "NEMSA was a good idea, but it fell apart in execution—as over three thousand members who left NEMSA in the last two years (over half its membership) have already discovered. NEMSA’s true problems are Torren Colcord and a board of directors that empowers him." Former Co-Founder Tim Bonifay also stated in a letter "I helped create NEMSA because I believed in what the organization could achieve. But the NEMSA out campaigning today is not the one that I co-founded, and I would be ashamed to be a part of that organization today."
NEMSA members, as reported by EMS Insider have been critical of NEMSA due to NEMSA not providing Board of Directors meeting minutes and/or financial information about NEMSA upon request
Read more about this topic: National Emergency Medical Services Association
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