by WILLIAM MURPHY AND DAN JANISON
New York's Bravest battled their bosses yesterday as the firefighters' union issued a vote of no confidence in the fire commissioner, and the commissioner and the mayor fired back by suggesting that firefighters should look at their own conduct lately.
The vote of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, whose members are angry at the lack of a new contract and cuts in staffing, came as no surprise.
Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and Mayor Michael Bloomberg said later at separate news conferences that the firefighters' problems were self-imposed.
Union president Stephen Cassidy lit the fireworks when his delegates approved the no-confidence motion at a meeting at a Manhattan hotel, citing a litany of complaints, from random drug testing to cuts in staffing on most fire engines.
Bloomberg's reply was blunt: the union "should probably step back and take a look in the mirror.
"We will not tolerate turning a firehouse into a brothel. We're not gonna tolerate firefighters drinking when they're on the job. We absolutely will not let anyone who's on drugs drive a fire engine," he said.
The mayor was referring to:
Allegations that several firefighters had sex with a mentally troubled woman in a Bronx firehouse.
Several firefighters who were disciplined for drinking or having alcohol in firehouses, including a drunken brawl in a Staten Island firehouse on New Year's Eve.
The union's objection to the system of random drug testing, even after a firefighter who crashed a rig into another fire vehicle was found to have cocaine in his system.
Both Scoppetta and the mayor suggested that the real problem was that the firefighters have been without a contract for almost two years and that there was a crackdown on medical leave, now at 7.53 percent of scheduled work hours.
They also suggested that Cassidy was playing to his membership because he was up for re-election in the spring.
"That's their spin," Cassidy said of the comments by Scoppetta and Bloomberg.
"I want to know on what day no one can criticize the mayor, criticize the fire commissioner, because of an [union] election. I'll criticize him when I'm right and when I damn well please, and I'm right today and I please today," he said.
Scoppetta refused to say whether he thought firefighters were abusing the department's unlimited medical leave policy.
Scoppetta insisted he was not troubled by the union's criticism.
"I find it a distraction...It's hard to take Steve Cassidy seriously on this issue," he said.
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