Posted on 11/29/2008 11:58:29 AM PST by Jonx6
Union members want a contract on their terms, without regard for the residents of Austin. They have forgotten who pays the bills.
In rejecting a fair and generous contract, the Austin Firefighters Association is engaging in a kind of political extortion to maintain high pay and perks while preserving an outmoded culture at the fire department. That culture has for decades resisted the kind of change Austin leaders have demanded as a way of integrating the department into the greater Austin community. The department is, and has been, a closed club that does not look like the city or reflect its values.
Perhaps firefighters mean to flex their muscle by rejecting a fair contract that the city's other public safety unions — those of the police and EMS — accepted. Instead, they have conjured ill will. City Manager Marc Ott, who represents taxpayers' interests, should stand firm in his decision not to go back to the negotiating table. And the Austin City Council should back him all the way.
We remind council members that collective bargaining requires give and take from both sides. We clearly see what the city has been giving to firefighters in bargaining agreements over the past decade. But we continue to question what we are receiving.
At this point, Austin firefighters are the highest paid in the state, earning about 20 percent more than their peers in several other big city departments in Texas. A recent study showed that by their third year, Austin firefighters had a maximum base pay of $77,638. That's more than $20,000 above the Texas average.
Those benefits reflect the high regard Austin residents have for the profession and the desire to recruit and retain a diverse group of qualified men and women to those jobs. Those goals have not been met.
Even so, the city has shown good faith in bargaining with firefighters and did so in the current proposed three-year contract that awarded firefighters 3 percent pay raises next year if other city employees received 2.5 percent. Otherwise, firefighters would get 2.75 percent. That would rise to 3.5 percent in the third year of the contract. Also, the city's contribution to the firefighters pension fund would have risen 2 percent this year and 1 percent in the third year of the contract. In return, the city sought more flexibility in hiring and promotion decisions for incoming Fire Chief Rhoda Mae Kerr.
From the start of negotiations seven months ago, union leaders showed callousness toward the city's economic predicament with unreasonable demands for salaries and benefits. They initially resisted random drug testing and tried to renege on past agreements that opened the door for more women and minorities to be firefighters. That tactless posture might well have to do with the fact that most firefighters — six out of 10 — don't live in Austin. Too many are disengaged from the Austin community and see their jobs as reliable paychecks that spend well in Giddings, Midlothian (near Fort Worth) and Hallettsville (east of San Antonio).
After months of back and forth, city officials and union leaders shook hands in agreement. That didn't last long. A few union negotiators went rogue, trashing the contract to the membership, which in turn, voted it down. For the time being, firefighters are working without a contract, meaning they revert to civil service rules.
The sticking point seems to be that the union wants to maintain a hiring and promotions system that protects the status quo rather than cede more of that authority to the new chief. That is on top of squeezing more concessions from Austin taxpayers in the way of pay, perks and pensions.
Union members want a contract on their terms, without regard for the residents of Austin. They have forgotten who pays the bills.
The city manager and council should remind them.
The contract was rejected because the city refused to put forward any hiring or promotion processes, and in fact refused to write in ANY minimum standards at all. They wanted a blank check to ignore all civil service laws on hiring and promotions, and create whatever processes they wanted with the right to change those processes at ANY time, even while mid-stream of hiring or promoting processes. The firefighters did not have any issue with the pay proposed.
3 Year firefighters make a generous wage of $58,083 a year.
It used to be that it took awhile for new guys to make that kind of money. But the city pushed better pay for new hires in the department as a selling point for the recuiters. Now they use that againt use to point out we make too much. The city spends about a million dollars recruiting for jobs that people are beating down the doors to get.
The City and the Un-American Spaceman are obsessed with race, sex, and ethnicity. Firefighers just want qualified recuits.
Things are going to get interesting. Lots of municipalities are struggling and the only way many survive is to stand up to the unions.
www.pensiontsunami.com
This site has a ton of interesting articles about the coming crisis. Updated daily.
Although I dislike unions, I find it amusing that the left, the champion of unions, now finds itself in a battle with one.
I always find it amazing how the left vilifies its others who disagree with them. And yet on our side, there are always some who call of restraint.
Kinda says it all right there. The city wants womyn, hispanics, blacks, crips, whatever odds and ends they can identify to be given jobs with the FD; whether they can perform or not.
More white-o-phobia from the tolerant diversity whores of Austin, right?
You are 100% correct there. I don't care what ethnic group a fireman belongs to, if he can haul my fat unconscious butt out of a burning building, he's the MAN. The Creator did not build 99.5% of women to be capable of carring heavy loads down ladders. For some political party to decide that a 95lb. petite blonde has the same worthiness as a 250lb. ex-linebacker is foolhardy at best.
A Fireman is the hero of last resort. When fire sprinklers fail, when flame-retardant materials fail, when common sense fails (as in sleeping with a cigarette in bed) - the Fireman is all that stands between certain death and life. This 'hero' has to be able to get heavy equipment where it's needed, he needs to get his team in, and out of a hazardous envirornment with ZERO fatalities, and if possible, rescue as many victims as they can. You can not do that with a team of aging cheerleaders - cute dresses or not.
Bottom line, this is a job for MEN, not boys, not girls and not women. To insist that women are equal to performing the task as a team of men is sheer nonsense. What will end up happening is that the mixed team will have men, forced to do their job, as well as pick up the slack that the women cannot handle. As an added perk, the men get to lived in a sexual harassment charged atmosphere at the station, should any man accidentally 'LOOK' at a woman in a manner she finds offensive. To destroy your career, all that needs happen is for you to be accused of sexual harassment. There is no need for a trial, there is no need for a defence - you will be assumed guilty and must prove your innocence. Even if you manage to prove your innocence, the taint on your record will follow you forever; making you doubly guity if such a charge is ever placed in the department again.
Wow! Look at the code-speak in that sentence!!! Translated: too many white boys.
Perhaps people need to go back to the ways of the first fire company founded in the USA by Ben Franklin.
It seems you're right.
I was reading this piece and my gut reaction was to support the city over the union. But after I got to this line...
Those benefits reflect the high regard Austin residents have for the profession and the desire to recruit and retain a diverse group of qualified men and women to those jobs. Those goals have not been met.
...it sounds like you are right.
The left is so amusing; they have no idea how to react when their numerous interest groups (homosexuals, minorities, unions, entitlement hucksters, environmentalists) oppose each other.
This fight has the diversity cult pitted against organized labor, and it seems that the diversity cult has their favor this time. This will be very indicative of Obama's America. Perhaps more of this will push members of organized labor in our direction.
If I'm a fire fighter inside a burning building, I want absolute confidence that my brother fire fighters will be watching my back and pulling my butt out of there if things go bad. That is non-negotiable. An unqualified fool is likely to screw up in a way that gets people killed.
Sounds like it’s time for he city to give Rural Metro a call.
Oh we made our bed by voting the contract down, and we are more than happy to sleep in it.
I just think it’s funny how the city and the hatesman paints objective civil service laws as racist and sexest and the union as evil for abiding by them.
I thought unions could do no wrong now that Obama is in office.
Ping
Your lefty allies were just fine when they were ringing more and more money out of the taxpayers for you. Now they want a little payback for that help in the form of getting more of their kind of people hired and you dont like it. You wont get much sympathy from me. When the lefties get their way, and eventually they will, the hiring of the unqualified will be as much the fault of the union and its members as it will be of the politicians and those who voted for them. This was always the endgame for union supporting lefty politicians and youve helped them on their way there.
They want to hire dummies who can’t pass a written test and weaklings who can’t carry injured fat people from burning houses. The paper is more interested in PC quota games than in protecting the public. Typical liberal horse dung.
No doubt the private sector can do anything cheaper than a goverment entity can.
For instance, EMS here in Austin is championed by Mike Levy, of Texas Monthly,( http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:526022 ) and the Un-America Hatesman. Which is why it remains it own separate department with a whole different support structure. If the city was really worried about money, it would join the 2 departments and get rid of a whole Command and Admin structure. But that will never happen to EMS in Austin.
"Your lefty allies were just fine when they were ringing more and more money out of the taxpayers for you. Now they want a little payback for that help in the form of getting more of their kind of people hired and you dont like it."Their kind of people? You should know that I am hispanic.
"You wont get much sympathy from me."I don't want or need any.
"When the lefties get their way, and eventually they will, the hiring of the unqualified will be as much the fault of the union and its members as it will be of the politicians and those who voted for them."Well I must agree with you here. I live in a country that does not think or vote like me. That is true for presidents and city council members alike.
"This was always the endgame for union supporting lefty politicians and youve helped them on their way there."That is true. I have supported this union with dues and by extension the AFL/CIO. I'm not proud of it. But Texas is a right to work state, so I don't have the option of witholding that portion of dues that support things other than the local my only option is to quit the union. And if I were not in this union then I would not have been able to vote crap like this down. I would have no say what-so-ever. So, I will concede you have me on this point.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. Rural Metro runs ambulances to around 300,000 miles, and runs their employees into the ground. You seldom see a Rural Metro employee over about 28 because they get burned out working for near minimum wage running 20 calls a shift. If you want an inexperienced 24 year old operating on no sleep working on you when you have a heart attack, they're the guys.
Rural Metro will only take contracts on relatively new cities with extremely stringent fire and sprinkler codes. They can't make money on a department that actually responds to fire calls. Their stock is at $1.90 now. Back in 1996 it was around $38.
RM gives QuikLube service quality. Better than nothing, but they wouldn't be my first choice. Unfortunately, most people don't think about quality of emergency service until they've crashed their car into a tree.
State civil service law requires standardized tests. The city wanted the department to go to a quota system. When I left AFD, the city manager, Jesus Garza, reportedly referred to the FD as the Chardonnay Boys (a bunch of white whiners.) City management for Austin doesn't care how many people die in a fire as long as the proper demographic is standing around outside watching. I know. I worked there.
...the Austin Firefighters Association is engaging in a kind of political extortion to maintain high pay and perks while preserving an outmoded culture at the fire department. That culture has for decades resisted the kind of change Austin leaders have demanded as a way of integrating the department into the greater Austin community. The department is, and has been, a closed club that does not look like the city or reflect its values.
Those benefits reflect the high regard Austin residents have for the profession and the desire to recruit and retain a diverse group of qualified men and women to those jobs. Those goals have not been met.
In return, the city sought more flexibility in hiring and promotion decisions for incoming Fire Chief Rhoda Mae Kerr.
They initially resisted random drug testing and tried to renege on past agreements that opened the door for more women and minorities to be firefighters. That tactless posture might well have to do with the fact that most firefighters — six out of 10 — don't live in Austin.
The sticking point seems to be that the union wants to maintain a hiring and promotions system that protects the status quo rather than cede more of that authority to the new chief.
Do your homework before you start giving advice.
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