The Davis Professional Firefighters Union continues to protest on Tuesday afternoons in front of Davis City Hall, pressing for a new fire chief, and for changes to staffing and overtime policy, but, while the union has been both vocal and visible, there is little evidence that their struggles have gained them any advantage.
Jesse Hodorowski, a 22-year veteran firefighter, 14 of the years with the city of Davis, spoke during public comment and stated that he was deeply concerned about the fire department.
He said that he didn’t think the changes made by council in the last several months are in the best interest of the citizens of Davis. He said, “I don’t believe that the citizens would support being made and they would certainly question if their safety is being kept in mind.”
However, what Mr. Hodorowski and the leadership of the union seem to be missing is that these issues were thoroughly discussed at several council meetings earlier this year. The firefighters’ union conducted extensive outreach, they held community meetings, they canvassed residents, and they have conducted an action for the past three council meetings.
The result of this was hardly an outcry of indignation and alarm in the community. While there was opposition at the meetings in February and April, the numbers of the opponents were relatively small. Compare that to the opposition to fluoridation and the number of people who attended the planning commission hearing on Cannery and you put this into context.
For three weeks we have seen the firefighters picketing city hall. What has been the result of that? We have not seen letters to the editor or citizens coming to community chambers on this issue. It is not that the public is unengaged, but issues like plastic bags and fluoridation have trumped their concerns – if they have any – about the state of public safety.
The chief complaints of the firefighters’ union remain the lack of a permanent fire chief, the fire staffing cuts, and the overtime situation. On their face, none of these are unreasonable concerns. However, the firefighters have maintained an adversarial stance with the city, making public demands while refusing to work with the city on the reforms that the city has attempted to implement.
For instance, the city manager has stated that they would prefer to reach an agreement with the university on a joint management proposal, that would have the possibility of saving both organizations a lot of money while streamlining the management of the two departments.
The problem has been that the union leadership, led by Bobby Weist, has been opposed to joint management of the departments and they have attempted to sabotage the process from the outset. The resulting delay has necessarily delayed the hiring of a new chief.
The firefighters say they understand that the city is in fiscal crisis, but I see no evidence that they, in fact, understand that at all. While they have maintained their opposition to fire staffing changes, they have avoided the fact that they are one of two departments that have failed to agree to the new terms in the current contract.
In essence, the firefighters are refusing to take the same cuts as all other bargaining units, while at the same time they are complaining about staffing cuts implemented by the city – attempting to both save money and restructure fire staffing.
Instead of looking at ways to compromise with the city as the city faces a new wave of $15 million in budget deficits over the next several years, the firefighters have dug in their heels and refused to negotiate in good faith.
They effectively want to have their cake and eat it, and would prefer to see other employees lose their jobs because of it.
The overtime situation was a natural outcome of this impasse. Basically, what has happened is that, through attrition, the fire department has reached the level of overall staff they believe they need to run the department when they have 11-person shifts instead of 12-person shifts.
Right now, the fire staffing changes were implemented in July. The city was not about to hire new firefighters to staff 12-person shifts only to have to lay them off in a few months as staffing decreases.
In other words, this should be a temporary problem, in part caused by their failure to cooperate, that will resolve itself once staffing is reduced.
The bottom line here is that the union could have sat down with the city with the understanding that cuts needed to be made, and they could have found mutually agreeable ways to cut costs.
Instead, what we have seen since last December, with regard to boundary drop, joint management, and fire staffing, and going back even further with regard to the MOUs, is that the firefighters’ union has taken an adversarial stance and steadfastly refused to work with the city on changes.
Now they want to complain about the lack of a permanent fire chief, that the city is running the fire department administratively through the police department, that they are working too much overtime, and that the city failed to apply for a grant for more firefighters.
At some point, they need to take responsibility for these problems. Somehow, changes have occurred in other departments without this form of crisis.
The funny thing is that the community seems to get it. Dozens have come out in the last few weeks on issues other than fire staffing. That ought to tell us something right there.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
dear firefighters: it’s time for you to take some sort of cut for the good of the community that you purport to care about.
Go figure, only one post here and it’s Davis Progressive. The same person that outed a retired firefighter who used to post on the Vanguard when firefighter issues were discussed. I haven’t seen him post here since.
you gotta be kidding me gi? you have no love for the firefighters either.
DP, I don’t agree with much of what the firefighters are doing but that being said I’d never out one of them and their alias. Would you like it if you were outed?
that was my mistake, but it doesn’t explain your “go figure” response.
When you out people they might stop posting, as is the case of that retired firefighter, and others may be concerned that they might be outed too so they don’t post.