City, firefighters reach tentative deal on contract
Published Tuesday, April 22, 2008
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Stumble It!Fairbanks city officials have struck a tentative deal with a firefighters’ union for a new contract.
The deal, if approved by union members and the Fairbanks City Council, would use a financial settlement to extinguish a legal fight between the union and City Hall.
The Fairbanks Fire Fighters Association is the last of four unions at the city to settle over controversial budget cuts made by the City Council in late 2003. The cuts ignored funding for sections of union contracts covering some health care and other benefits.
The deal would bring the time-off allowance for firefighters close to that given to other city workers, city chief of staff Pat Cole and fire chief Warren Cummings said.
Among the changes, the contract would let the fire chief block firefighters from swapping shifts in certain situations. Cummings said in the past, any given worker could “trade” shifts and build a long string of 24-hour straight workdays and follow them with weeks or months off.
“We felt it was a safety concern” to have a firefighter work too many days in a row, he said.
Fairbanks Fire Fighters president Dominic Lozano said the contract includes concessions from both sides. He said firefighters have not received basic cost-of-living raises since their old contract ran out three years ago.
“I think this contract is a pretty good one,” Lozano said. “Both sides aren’t completely happy with the outcome ... it’s going to be a tough sell to both the council and our membership.”
A district judge in January denied an administrative appeal from firefighters over the budget cuts. Lozano said the tentative deal aims to steer clear of chances the issue could end up in Alaska Supreme Court. Lacking an up-to-date contract, firefighters have been working under the terms of an expired contract in recent years as their union’s lawsuit worked its course.
“We’d be probably looking at three to four years more before we got to a final outcome,” he said.
The city would contribute a maximum of $950 a month to each firefighter’s health care costs under the plan.
The contract also aims to reduce overtime and prevent excessive shifts and absences by firefighters, who accumulate more overtime per worker than almost any other city department — more than $6,000 in overtime, on average, for each Fire Department employee in 2006.
The contract, which would run through 2011, would give the firefighters’ union more than $200,000 in exchange for an agreement not to take the case to the state Supreme Court.
The City Council will meet as a finance committee this week and next to review the tentative deal before discussing it formally early next month. The union is also tentatively slated to vote on the contract in early May, Cummings said.
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Wonder why we got more information about the Governors labor pains than we get about the new contract,, you can bet the city once again will PAY PAY PAY, for a service that could be done by VOLUNTEERS.
There is There is absolutely no way the city firefighter’s job could be done by volunteers. It is a 24/7 job. All of the local volunteer departments are very shorthanded right now and none of the volunteer departments respond to as many calls as the city fire department does. A volunteer does not get paid so they have to have a job, so you would lose a lot of people to volunteer during weekday work hours and as busy as the city dept is you would have to have a least 10 people in the station at any time. The volunteer thing has been looked into by someone outside of the city and I think the minimum number of active volunteers they figured out you would need was a couple hundred…….. More than all the volunteer departments have now combined. You would also have to train all those people which would cost a lot of money.
Good one Iceguy!!! Firefighters in this City are way under paid and definitely not appreciated. 95% of anyone in this city couldn't handle this job. They put their lives on the line every time they respond! They deal with death and dying every day they go to work.
They are exposed to disease and sickness every day they go to work. They respond to car accidents, heart attacks, stroke victims, fires, suicides and on and on. Could you respond to a suicide, the guys brains are blown every where and do it on a regular basis? I know I could not and I highly doubt many could! They console and comfort families! It takes a special kind of guy to all this and more. They respond to the inebriates with compassion and kind words. They stay at fires in 35 below for hours making sure every last smolder is put out!
They do it because they want to help people. They love the job or they wouldn't be there. A firefighter starts at $13.00 an hour. They definitely don't do it for the money. The city is always threatening to do away with their jobs. AS if they don't live under enough stress as it is! It takes a lot more than most are capable of!!!!!!
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