Last May, Fort Worth City Council members unanimously approved a plan to dissolve the region’s longtime EMS provider, MedStar. The city opted to switch to a fire-based EMS system, housed within its fire department.
That decision necessitated a lot of behind-the-scenes work to make a fire-based system feasible, including reopening collective bargaining between the city and the union representing its firefighters, IAFF 440. The majority of MedStar employees have been mapped over to equivalent positions with the city, in an effort to retain talent during the merger.
The city and IAFF 440 have been bargaining over the details of that merger since July 2024. They hosted multiple bargaining sessions, where city management sat across the table from the union’s board, and convened privately in several subcommittees dedicated to hashing out the essential details…