OCEAN CITY — Public advocacy for setting a contract with Ocean City Beach Patrol lifeguards drew a sharp rebuke from the city’s business administrator at Thursday evening’s City Council meeting.
The city has been in negotiations with lifeguards on a new contract. The contract came into the news last year after the city had to leave some beaches unguarded late in the season and supporters complained that Ocean City’s lifeguards were paid less than the guards on other South Jersey beach patrols. (A survey of patrols showed some communities paid their guards substantially more than Ocean City, but others were in the ballpark.)
Former OCBP guard James Sullivan spoke up during public comment at the council meeting, saying he helped negotiate the first contract 45 years ago while on the patrol and that now he is volunteering his help with the current negotiations.
Sullivan, an attorney who said he has spent years negotiating dozens of agreements representing municipalities in their negotiations with police and fire unions, said he was bothered by the “dismissive” treatment by the city’s negotiators of the lifeguard union’s bargaining team. He asserted that the last offer to the city was reasonable and separated on pay for only a total of $4,000, and it was surprising an amount that small was holding things up.
Sullivan also said the OCBP unit representing the redshirts — the guards in the stands — was turned down after asking for grievance arbitration.
He said the main reason he appeared before council and what bothers him the most is that there are unprotected beaches and that the guards in the stands are so young. He noted that Mayor Jay Gillian referred to them as “kids.” At the previous council meeting at which some members of the public spoke up on behalf of paying the lifeguards more, Gillian said the city was in the process of negotiating. “We’re trying to be fair to the taxpayers and fair to the kids. Negotiations take time,” Gillian said.
Sullivan said OCBP lifeguard Calvin Peck is one of the negotiating team members and has 25 years on the beach. He added the 24 members of the supervisors unit, or blue shirts, are the most experienced guards, but only a handful of the guards in the stands have two, three or four years of experience.
Lifeguards, he said, learn through their time on the beach and can’t learn everything they need to know in rookie school.
Sullivan, who spends summers in Ocean City, often with his seven grandchildren, brought up the drowning Sept. 9 on the 12th Street beach, implying that happened because of the way the beaches were staffed.
He said there would be another drowning if things didn’t change and asked City Council to get involved.
Business Administrator George Savastano refuted Sullivan’s assertions and said in 30 years he never negotiated a contract at a council meeting.
“You don’t negotiate at council meetings,” he said, noting he never had a person who sat at the bargaining table speak at a council meeting, but he separated that from when members of unions would attend a meeting to show their solidarity, as police union members did at a prior council meeting.
He said the city hasn’t been dismissive and he has been “nothing but respectful,” calling negotiations a process.
Savastano said the city agreed to grievance arbitration and agreed to allow the beach patrol members to be represented by the Teamsters.
“We agreed to a lot of things,” Savastano said, and the city is OK negotiating immediately with the Teamsters, even before the lifeguards’ affiliation with the powerful union was certified.
He said it was “absolutely not the case” that the city wasn’t negotiating in good faith.
“This is, in my view, a tactic. To me it’s wrong. It’s not negotiating in good faith,” Savastano said. He defied anyone to claim the city hasn’t been fair over its history with its employees.
He said the union was not happy with the contract negotiated four years ago “but a deal is a deal. Last year was a problem because (they) didn’t like the deal. The city doesn’t always like the deal, but we live by it.”
He said it was irresponsible for Sullivan to suggest the drowning on the beach was caused because of the situation existing at the time.
“To try to connect those dots … and say that could happen again is a scare tactic,” he said. “It’s irresponsible. I take offense to it.”
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
