Sick time and overtime numbers are skyrocketing for Winnipeg’s firefighters and paramedics, far more than in previous years.
Overtime hours are up over 40 per cent, jumping from just over 110,000 calls last year to 154,126 so far in 2022.
Sick days are also seeing a sharp uptick with a 58-per cent increase — going from 10,535 calls in 2021 to nearly 17,000 so far this year.
Christian Schmidt, head of the WFPS, tells 680 CJOB the system is under extreme stress.
“We are still realizing the impacts of COVID here at fire paramedic service; we were hit early in the year,” he says.
The combined increase of sick days and overtime is attributed, in part, to the amount of COVID-19 cases during the first quarter of the year.
But burnout and exposure to violence are also upping stress levels for workers, as well as creating staffing issues.
“We’ve had a lot of people working flat out here … for months, and people are getting tired and it’s starting to impact our our ability to staff all of our machines,” says Schmidt.
“We’ve seen in the last few weeks where we have had occasion that units have had to be placed off duty, unfortunately, because we didn’t have staff readily available to work.”
Overtime costs and other salary expenses also come with financial consequences, with the department predicting an overspend of $7.5 million in 2022.
Schmidt says WFPS is looking to recruit more workers to mitigate staffing issues.
“We’ve already done our pre-planning for recruitment. We have 100 applicants ready to go that are going to be undergoing interviews over the summer months,” he says.
“That’ll set us up for our fall recruit class and those will be classes for both paramedic and fire operations.”
Schmidt says it’ll take a multitude of steps to alleviate current pressures.
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