According to Bill Holmes, director of Cumberland County

dispatch, shifts are bid according to seniority. Since Peruzzi and

other Windham dispatchers are new to county, Holmes said, they are

at the bottom of the seniority scale, as mandated by the county

dispatcher’s union contract.

WINDHAM – Not a month into the merger, Windham’s longest-serving police and fire/rescue dispatcher has resigned his position at Cumberland County dispatch.

John Peruzzi, a Bridgton resident and 31-year veteran dispatcher for Windham before the Aug. 16 merger with the county operation, resigned from his new post at the Cumberland County Regional Communications Center on High Street in South Windham, saying he couldn’t take the late-night and early-morning shifts required in the new position.

“I have nothing bad to say about county. It’s one helluva place to work. Great people especially. But I’m 54 years old. And doing the overnights just hurts the body. I’m not a young guy anymore,” said Peruzzi, who used to work early morning to mid-afternoon at Windham dispatch.

Peruzzi, who once described his dispatching job as “either quiet or sheer terror,” isn’t sure what his next steps are.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t have any clue what I’ll be doing now,” he said last week.

According to Bill Holmes, director of Cumberland County dispatch, shifts are bid according to seniority, with senior employees being given preference for the eight- or 12-hour shifts, which usually start at 7 a.m., 7 p.m., 3 a.m. and 3 p.m. Since Peruzzi and other Windham dispatchers are new to county, Holmes said, they are at the bottom of the seniority scale, as mandated by the county dispatcher’s union contract.

Peruzzi was one of the half-dozen Windham dispatchers who were all but guaranteed a spot at county during merger negotiations. The county’s promise to bring over the experienced dispatchers, which was a much-publicized aspect of contract negotiations between the town and county, eased public fears that county dispatchers wouldn’t have the knowledge required to effectively dispatch emergency responders in Windham. The council voted May 25 to accept the contract, and the town passed the item as part of the larger municipal budget at the June annual town meeting. The merger occurred Aug. 16.

“We have a labor contract we have to go by. Shifts are bid out by seniority. And whenever we meet with any new community we always make that clear. I made that clear to each of the new employees as well before they agreed to come on. Everyone was made aware of the policy,” Holmes said.

Town Manager Tony Plante confirmed Holmes’ statement and said he tried to convince county to allow some sort of exception regarding the seniority issue.

“I talked to (County Manager) Peter Crichton about credit for prior service and the only ability they had in the contract was with respect to pay, that there was no way to credit our employees and put them ahead of current county employees. The contract didn’t allow them to do that,” Plante said.

However, Plante said he never raised the issue at public meetings on the matter, and members of the Town Council were not made aware of the seniority stipulation.

“The way that worked out is it’s an issue between the county and their union in terms of when he got moved over there,” said Chairman Bill Tracy.

When asked whether he would have raised the issue during negotiations had he known about it, Tracy said, “It’s the county’s policy, not the town of Windham’s. I might have brought it up, but we probably also would have encouraged the union here to interact with the county’s union. Unions probably interact better with one another than to have the town of Windham trying to force the county to do something they might not have wanted to do. There’s a reason organizations have unions and that’s what it comes down to in my mind,” Tracy said, adding, “I feel bad for the guy, but it is what it is.”

Recently resigned Councilor Carol Waig, who didn’t return phone calls seeking comment, and John MacKinnon both voted against the dispatch merger on May 25.

“What I was looking for was more time to examine the proposal, and that might have come up during the examination,” MacKinnon said, referring to the seniority issue.

Good policy?

County officials agree that current policy regarding seniority is acceptable. They say other towns have melded into the department with little fanfare regarding the seniority policy.

“My position is this: I do agree with the policy,” said Holmes. “I think employees at Cumberland County who have been here should have the expectation (that they will have seniority) over another employee” who has recently transferred in a merger.

Crichton agreed, likening the situation to his own job. “If I left here and worked with another county organization, when I walked out of here, I’d expect to be starting as a new employee elsewhere,” he said. “That was all explained to each dispatcher before they were hired. John was welcomed on board. It’s unfortunate he decided he couldn’t stay.”

Waig voted against the proposal in part because she felt the town would lose the local knowledge experienced Windham dispatchers had developed. And when asked if Peruzzi’s departure would impact the county’s dispatch service, Crichton said, “It’s important people who work in dispatch care about their communities, but I would say with the technology we have today, the technology replaces the local knowledge a dispatcher might have because he’s familiar with or lives in a town.”

Windham’s representative to the Cumberland County Commission, Malory Shaughnessy, said she understands the lack of seniority “is a hardship” for newly merged Windham employees, but said the policy “is a good policy in that we have to have a stable work environment. We negotiated in good faith with our union and they do with us and you have to abide by those agreements.”

She added that seniority is a “standard” at most workplaces and to sidestep existing policies to appease new towns entering county dispatch would violate the trust forged between the union and county management.

Shaughnessy also surmised Windham’s cost-cutting move to county, which could save the town tens of thousands of dollars a year, was a needed budgetary measure given economic realities.

Windham “made some tough choices at the policy level to provide good, solid public safety at a better rate, to save taxpayer dollars,” she said.

John Peruzzi

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