NEW YORK, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- New York firefighters hurt in the 2001 terror attacks are threatening to sue to force the city to put them back to work or retire them on disability.
Numerous firefighters have been assigned desk jobs -- too sick for active duty but too well for disability pensions -- under a rule that changed "after the fire department realized how many firefighters were affected" by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said attorney Jeffrey Goldberg.
Goldberg told the New York Daily News he was preparing a class-action suit on behalf of 30 firefighters.
"There's no logic to keep them on the payroll. I think there's a political agenda to protect the pension fund," Goldberg said.
Before the terror attacks, the city's pension board generally granted disability to firefighters who flunked a breathing test. Now, however, they must undergo a pulmonary function test that the firefighters' union says does not measure the breathing problems most firefighters face.
A New York Law Department official told the newspaper the pension board's "decisions were appropriate in these cases."
