WOONSOCKET — The city might try to limit the types of jobs its firefighters can hold while they are off-duty, one of the city’s lawyers said yesterday.

Christopher Lambert said the city is concerned that with the increased overtime caused by the layoffs, the remaining department employees do not come to work already fatigued.

“It’s not an absolute ban,” Lambert said. “Generally we’re trying to install a policy or procedure that would curtail types of employment that firefighters accept so that their performance or effectiveness is not impaired.”

But Joseph A. Andriole, a staffer for the state chapter of the International Association of Fire Fighters, called any such proposal blatantly illegal.

“There is no state law that I’m aware of, no contract clause that would allow the city to do anything like that,” he said.

Andriole blasted the city’s announced intention, saying it was designed to distract the public from the problems the city itself created when it laid off 11 firefighters Monday.

“This is just, in my opinion, a ploy by the city to create a circus atmosphere to take attention away from the real problems,” Andriole said.

The firefighters’ schedule makes it possible for many to hold second jobs. They alternate two days of 14-hour night shifts with two days of 10-hour day shifts and then four days off.

Lambert said any possible order on outside employment was still “a work in progress.” But he added the city has a legitimate interest in being able to review some types of outside employment by its firefighters.

Among the situations he said the city might want to prevent would be city firefighters using their status for personal gain, doing the same type of work for someone else that they would normally be expected to do for the city, something that would have to be inspected or approved by city officials, or work that would create such a time demand as to diminish their effectiveness as firefighters.

Lambert said an example of the last category might be security guard. The city would have an interest in whether one of its firefighters had been on post for 18 or 24 hours and then showed up for work at a fire station, he said.

The possibility of the limits is the latest exchange between the city and the IAFF in their ongoing standoff over $729,000 in contract concessions the city is seeking from the union. The two sides have been negotiating for more than a month but have been unable to come to terms and the relationship has steadily deteriorated.

City officials have said they need the givebacks because of Governor Carcieri’s plan to cut $3.6 million from the aid the city was expecting this year. The city, citing what it said was the need to accumulate savings before June 30, laid off 11 firefighters this week and left 7 vacant positions unfilled.

jhill@projo.com