Posted on 08/02/2005 4:17:08 PM PDT by Jonx6
By Joshunda Sanders
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, August 2, 2005
The Austin Fire Department has doused its hiring until its union contract expires Sept. 30, officials said Monday.
The decision comes after several concerns were raised about the department's screening process, the latest of which was a notice in June from the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saying that Austin's physical ability test was unfair to female applicants.
Michelle DeCrane, a spokeswoman for the Austin Fire Department, said that the city's physical test mirrors others used by fire departments across the country and that the EEOC notice would affect the whole country, not just Austin.
Acting Fire Chief Jim Evans said the freeze on the hiring process would not harm the department's staffing levels. It currently has 995 active firefighters.
About 1,300 applicants, how- ever, will be affected.
Evans said the department will try to call or e-mail every candidate to tell them about the freeze and will stay in contact with them until a new hiring process is in place.
"Naturally," he said, "there are a lot of people who are going to be upset."
Evans said there would have been about 60 cadets in the next class, the city's109th. About 2,300 people took the written exam in March, he said, and there were initially 3,000 applicants.
Spokesman Mike Frick said that the department will throw out the test results and that all 1,300 active applicants will have to start the hiring process anew once a new contract is in place.
The department expects to resume hiring under a new contract or under the Civil Service Act on Oct. 1.
The union and the city have been in negotiations regarding a new contract.
Mike Martinez, president of the Austin Association of Professional Firefighters, did not return calls Monday. Barbara Rush, a spokeswoman for the association, declined to comment.
There are several components to the department's hiring process, including a written exam, a behavioral personnel assessment and a physical ability test.
The national cutoff time for completion of the physical test is 10 minutes and 20 seconds, Evans said. During that time, applicants are tested on the physical demands required of firefighters such as dragging a hose and raising a ladder.
The last time the test was given in Austin in 2004, Evans said, the failure rate for women was 50 percent. When it was first administered in 2000, 87 percent of female cadets failed it.
The EEOC says that the high failure rate for women points to a cutoff time that is legally insufficient.
The EEOC complaint is not connected to other challenges the department has faced in the hiring process this year, including grievances filed by the Austin Association of Professional Firefighters.
In April, the union filed a grievance challenging a comprehension test.
Then, other concerns were raised within the department about rating inconsistencies for the behavioral test and oral interviews.
The combination of the grievances and the EEOC notice, Evans said, created "insurmountable obstacles that AFD could not, in good conscience, ignore."
"This decision has been a work in progress," he said, "and unfortunately, no matter what we decided to do, there were going to be some unhappy people."
joshundasanders@statesman.com; 445-3630
How many bugles does your Dad have? I hope you just think of that last try as just a “dry run.”
Ed's alright!
Austin, Portland, and San Francisco are "home cities" to uber PC activism. Perhaps Austin will go the way of the SFFD, and begin soliciting for tiny Asian-American women to be given "preferential hiring" for the fire department. Of course, few wish to ever mention how many female-hires are given "light duty", or "disability status" -- while getting the same pay as the guys fighting the fires. There are some women, few, who CAN be on merit with the guys. But that is being torn asunder through the watering down of "standards" and "quota promotions" within various FD. Politics, as usual, from the PC Brigades.
Well, with all the fires that have been in the news the past few days, I guess I'll sleep safer tonight...... NOT!
I wondered if they had anything to do with the issue. They came right afterwards and the thought crossed my mind.
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