An arbitration decision in Pennsylvania awarded firefighters the right to live outside the community. But the decision is being criticized by the firefighters’ union more for what it failed to do than what it actually did.
A three arbitrator panel handling the Wilkes Barre interest arbitration issued its ruling on February 1, 2011, awarding IAFF Local 104 two 3% raises effective January 1, 2011 and January 1, 2012, and granting personnel permission to live within a 13.5 mile radius of fire department headquarters effective January 1, 2012.
The decision also eliminated parity pay with police, eliminated a no-layoff provision, imposed mandatory drug and alcohol testing, and increased the health care co-share for firefighters by 8%.
The union’s labor arbitrator, Thomas W. Jennings, refused to sign the decision and instead wrote a scathing dissenting opinion criticizing the panel for ignoring uncontradicted evidence submitted at the hearing on the need to increase staffing for reasons of firefighter safety. Staffing had been reduced from 14 to 12 in the last year due to budget concerns.
Here are copies of the decision and the dissent.
More negative precedent for Pennsylvania locals. The cost of living increase is shallow at best. It will not even cover the health care contribution. The battle between fire and the mayor is well known. Don’t be surprised when brownouts and hiring freezes occur. Curious to know what health care plan they got and if they even wanted it?
Sound like the city got what they wanted and the local was allowed to pick up the pieces
Phil
You know – when I saw the headline, and then read the article – I was struck by how the local newspaper seized on the one aspect of the story that was most likely to outrage the public to use in the headline. The Citizen’s Voice, chose to title its coverage of the arbitration award “Arbitration Agreement Allows W-B Firefighters to Live Outside City”. They ignored the realities – such as the fact that the pay raise was offset by the co-pay, the loss of parity, mandatory drug and alcohol testing, ignoring the staffing concerns, etc.
Its like the media is purposefully pandering to the public who wants to believe that the current economic woes are the fault of unionized employees who are nothing more than pigs feeding at the public trough. Reading the comments to the article is so disheartening. It couldn’t possibly be a generalized problem with world-wide economics, or that fact that we have incompetent politicians mismanaging things like pension funds – it has to be greedy firefighters, police officers and teachers.
Whether intentionally or not, the media is helping to undercut the perceived legitimacy of the concerns that public employees are raising. Let’s not even talk about firefighter staffing – how about teachers and class size. How is a teachers’ union greedy by insisting that maximum class size limits be honored? Who benefits by smaller class size? How are teachers greedy by wanting to be able to teach effectively? More teachers does not put more money in the other teachers’ pockets? If teachers were the unscrupulous, unethical “pigs” – then they would sell out the kids for more money in their pockets each week. “Sure Mr. Mayor, you want 50 kids in a class, no problem, give us a 6% raise….”
I see the same argument when it comes to staffing fire trucks.
As you alluded to this is a problem being faced all over the country. CO had some initiatives on the ballot this fall to eliminate tax revenues that would have forced the reduction of emergency service budgets all over the state. In every article written about the issues the comments contained scathing remarks regarding the greedy, lazy emergency service providers. It was very disgusting to see how uniformed the population was about their tax dollars.
This is why I’m trying to get the word out about the importance of customer service programs and public education for ALL departments. People need to be informed and when information is lacking people will make it up. The internet is getting really bad about misinformation with the numerous bloggers sitting around making stuff up or using half-truths to further their cause.
This is why it is so imperative for the fire service to be out on the leading edge of public information. The more transparent a department is the more likely the public will support the goals of the organization.