From the City of Milpitas comes the story of the Milpitas Fire Department which will now lose jobs after the union rejected the staff-ratio proposal.
“A plan to avert four firefighters’ layoffs by dipping into city reserves to cover overtime costs within Milpitas Fire Department was rejected on Monday by the Milpitas International Association of Firefighters Local 1699,” said a news report from the Milpitas Post re-published in the San Jose Mercury.
The city council had received a $2.1 million federal grant that would have hired six additional fire personnel, but they jettisoned that plan and abandoned plans to transfer $600,000 from city reserves to the fire department’s overtime budget.
Instead, the council directed the city’s fire chief to proceed with previous recommendations that will now take a fire truck out of service as well as give notice of firefighter layoffs which took effect last Wednesday.
The news account reported, “Before the vote, [Fire Chief Brian] Sturdivant told the council the $2.1-million Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (Safer) grant administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency had been secured by the city. He said the grant – intended to pay the cost of six firefighters for two years and increase departmental staffing from 53 firefighters to 59 – could still be a point of discussion between the city and fire union toward possible staffing.”
“Conversely, Milpitas City Manager Tom Williams asserted rules governing the Safer grant’s utility were ‘inflexible,’ saying it could not be used for anything other than hiring those 59 firefighters,” the Post reported. “In the end, the council agreed the fire union let the opportunity to save jobs slip away.”
At issue, a city staffing plan meant to reduce overtime.
The Post reports, “After the meeting, Geoffrey Maloon, a fire captain, said Local 1699 members did not ratify the plan because it went against the union’s current contract which mandates minimum staffing of 15 on-duty firefighters per shift – though the city is now considering lowering that number to 14 on-duty firefighters per shift or less.”
“Minimum staffing is sacrosanct,” he said.
He added, “The Safer Grant is meant to increase staffing and the city is using it as leverage to force us into conceding staffing levels so the city can lower staffing levels isn’t it ironic? The current OT problem was created when the OT budget was arbitrarily slashed by 65 percent with no corresponding increase in staffing levels or workload redistribution, so when the fire department went way over budget it made us look like the bad guys to force council to seek concessions.”
However, the Post reports that the department’s average gross wage was $150,000 in 2012, plus full benefits that end up costing the city around $249,000 a year per firefighter.
They report that the overtime allocation was approved at $523,000 but the monthly average overtime was $167,800 which led to a total $1,006,795 from July through December.
According to the Post, “Those numbers were driven, according to city officials, by an absentee rate approaching 25 percent daily.”
The city had created an ad hoc fire department budget task force which had crafted the anti-layoff plan. The chair of that was reportedly “shocked” at the unions’ vote.
“I think that the firefighters’ union lost it,” she said.
During public comment, the Post continued, Steve King, the fire union’s president, said he was “sorry” the union disappointed the council. “But King added the Safer grant could still be utilized,” the newspaper reported.
“If you were to take the Safer grant, it would reduce overtime even more,” Mr. King said, adding, “Why would we lower our staffing when we could up our staffing?”
But do not worry – as is the case in the city of Davis and its fire staffing discussion, all of these issues were driven by public safety concerns.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
One can reasonably wonder how valid the argument is that “public safety” is sacrosanct, to borrow the term already used.
First off, it’s not so much the public’s safety that is being pleaded here, rather, it is employee safety. Notwithstanding the fact that those choosing to protect the public accept personal risk as a job condition, it still allows for the argument that we need to minimize the danger level to the extent practical.
Staffing levels are just a part and most simplistic method of moderating public safety risks. Staffing levels are also the most expensive. Other measures to increase safety of everybody include effective communications, policy revisions and creation, training, coordinating, staggering shift to meet peak demands, to name just a few. I’ve wondered why these other mitigating measures have never been mentioned in this long-festering debate. Has the fire union (or the City) implemented or supported any non-economic safety measures at the administrative level?
In the current fire-fighter debate and their relative safety, the contention is repeatedly made that 3-person staffing is more risky for responders and dwellers alike, a 4-person response is the only acceptable alternative, so says the union. I’ve wondered if there are INDEPENDENT studies to refute or support either position.
Given the thousands of fire departments that exist, with injury and fatality statistics always captured in any circumstance, what does the data show for injury, fatalities, and property damage comparing 3-person rigs verses 4-person responses? A listing of California cities with 3-person fire companies has been compiled. Are these collective fire fighters incurring statistically relevant injuries and fatalities compared to Davis, and are the fire-related property losses greater?
The Post reports (and David quotes above):
> that the department’s average gross wage was
> $150,000 in 2012, plus full benefits that end
> up costing the city around $249,000 a year
> per firefighter
The city of Milpitas could get hundreds (if not thousands) of qualified applicants to work 10 days a month as firefighters for less than half what they are paying today. You don’t need to fork over a quarter million every year to get a single firefighter in a state with close to 10% unemployment.
According to the Post:
> “Those numbers were driven, according to city
> officials, by an absentee rate approaching 25
> percent daily.”
Since most firefighters also have other jobs it often does not make sense to come in (that often involves a big drive) to work your firefighter job. Due to union protection a guy that misses even half of his work days every year will not get fired and all the other firefighters love the guy since they get time and a half for OT and can easily make more than the Governor of California (and the taxpayers keep paying more and more for less and less protection)…
I completely agree with SouthofDavis. Why do we as a city put up with the antics of the firefighters? The city should just put the pay and rules out front and the firefighters either take it or leave it. They can be easily replaced.
What this reminds me of is how teachers’ unions generally, and most times the DTA locally, have dealt with budget cutbacks. Rather than “giving back,” the union belief is that it would be better to lose more jobs (of employees with less tenure). Yet these same teachers’ unions will say their real interest is not in money or money for the teachers with seniority, but in education. Never mind that education would be better served to spread the costs to all teachers. And in the case of Milpitas, the highest paid firefighters, that is, those with seniority, will keep everything, but the most junior ones will be laid off, and, of course, public safety could be harmed (unless they know how to improve the efficiency of their staffing model).
[i]” Due to union protection a guy that misses even half of his work days every year will not get fired …”[/i]
I’ve actually never heard this about firefighters. Do you know of a source or a URL to look at?
I recall reading stories about other government employees who rarely if ever show up for work and never get fired; and I’ve read about some school districts where they pay bad teachers their full salaries, but won’t assign those teachers any classroom duties ([url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/22/new-york-teachers-paid-to_n_219336.html[/url]). The districts go that route because it is cheaper than the legal costs of trying to fire them.
Growth Izzue
> I completely agree with SouthofDavis. Why do we as a
> city put up with the antics of the firefighters?
As a city we “put up with it” it is just not that big a deal to most people. We could give each firefighter in town a $50,000 raise and it would mean less than $50 more in taxes per year for everyone in Davis. I (and just about everyone else in town) just don’t have the time to fight something that will raise my taxes by $50, but the firefighters (and their union and other unions) have a lot of time and money to fight for big raises (and even bigger pensions).
> The city should just put the pay and rules out front
> and the firefighters either take it or leave it. They
> can be easily replaced
Since a large number of people who run for city council hope to “move up” to bigger office they won’t do this. My friend Doug who is a Battalion Chief of a Northern California fire department has told me that he can get anyone he does not like out of local office. In recent years he has not had to push anyone out since he just tells them his track record and explains that dozens of good looking clean cut super nice guys in firefighter uniforms giving out badge stickers to the kids while telling their parents that “council member John Doe wants dangerous cuts that will result in kids dying” is not going to help them get re-elected…
Then Rich wrote (after I wrote: “Due to union protection a guy that misses even half of his work days every year will not get fired …”)
> I’ve actually never heard this about firefighters.
> Do you know of a source or a URL to look at?
I don’t have a URL, but have just heard it from firefighter friends. Back in the housing boom a firefighter I don’t know that well was getting super busy with his plumbing company and did not come in for months. My friend Brian got so much overtime because of this that he paid cash for a new Dodge truck and gave his old truck to the plumber/firefighter’s 16 year old kid as a thank you for getting him so much overtime. Also in the housing boom my (now retired at 51 with a pension of over $10K a month) firefighter cousin’s best friend who ran a real estate appraisal business on the side was getting super busy and since he was making more money as an appraiser (signing off on the work of multiple junior college kids that he paid about $15/hr) he worked very little for a full year.
One thing that you might be able to find on line is the unbelievably few number of hours that female firefighters work. I don’t want to bash firefighters as sexist, but most of my firefighter friends are the kind of guys that hunt, fish, tell dirty jokes and drive 4x4s with lift kits and big tires (I don’t hunt, fish, tell dirty jokes or drive a 4×4 with a lift kit and big tires and I’ve spent 1/3 of my life living in SF and Davis) and most of them were not happy when the courts made them hire female firefighters. Since most female firefighters hired are younger athletic gals it is no surprise that many of them have kids and are able to milk an unbelievably generous system that calls pregnancy a disability for a decade of having kids and very little work before they retire early with a (tax free) disability pension. The firefighters (and chiefs) are happy to look the other way since “technically” the department has a female firefighter or two, but the guys don’t need to see them or work with them.