EMS employee addresses Metro Council about contract dispute

Why does the city have any care or say in who gets the overtime at any agency? It doesn't matter if one worker gets $50,000 in overtime or if 50 workers get $1,000 each in overtime. The fact is that the city is shelling out $50,000 in overtime. Metro's job is to keep costs as low as possible, not to get involved in union squabbles over who gets the money. The city is not being completely truthful about the situation. The fact is that overtime is being paid to public safety because those agencies don't employ enough workers to handle the shifts that are demanded. So, the city could always hire more workers and cut overtime almost completely out. On the other hand, the administration is not telling us that they purposefully don't hire more workers and pay forced overtime instead because it is CHEAPER. It's cheaper because they don't have to train, uniform, certify, and pay benefits for a new worker if they just pay overtime to an existing worker.