Concord Firefighters Agree to 0% COLA Contract

Concord Firefighters Union Local 1045 has agreed to a contract with the city that will limit what firefighters will receive for pay increases in the next three years.

According to the Concord City Council and Derek Martel, the president of the Local, the firefighters agreed last week to an unprecedented 0 percent cost-of-living increase during each of the next three years. The firefighters will receive Civil Rights Martin Luther King Day off as a paid holiday and have modified how they will gain access to vacation time off, which brings the union in line with other unions in the city.

According to Martel, the union started negotiating with the city more than a year ago. He said firefighters recognized going into the process that the current political and economic climate was volatile, at the , but the city budget itself. So instead of focusing on significant pay increases, Martel said the union focused on tweaking some minor issues to make life a little easier.

“Our focus was primarily to improve some quality of life things for our members,” he said. “Both when they’re on the job and when they’re home with their families.”

Martel said the union did some analysis and realized that they were being paid comparatively to their peers in other communities. After looking at the analysis, he said, “we felt we were in a good position to offer the unprecedented three zeros in exchange for getting access to that annual time.”

Firefighters will continue to receive pay increases for steps based on years on the job, which average about 2.5 percent annually, Martell said, based on years of service. The step raises are awarded to firefighters for merit based on positive job performance reviews, he said.

“It’s not a given,” he said.

Staffing issues, however, remain.

Back in 2003, when Engine 1 was put back in service, there were 25 firefighters on any given shift. Now, a shift runs with about 20 to 21 firefighters. A typical firefighters shift is two day shifts then two night shifts and then off for four days. The day shifts are 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.; the night shifts are just the opposite. Currently, the department is at about 99 positions, down from about 115.

“Attrition-wise,” said Jeff Stone, the president of the officers union, Local 3195, “we’re just dropping positions. We haven’t hired a new firefighter for the fire department in four years.”

Officers negotiate

At the end of March, Stone will begin negotiations with the city on their contract. Right now, there are 27 members of the officers union, including battalion chiefs, lieutenants, captains, paramedic lieutenants, and other supervisors.

Stone said the officers union was “a little bit” surprised by the decision by the firefighters union to forgo cost-of-living increases but not that surprised.

“We recognize that it’s not a great financial time for the city,” he said. “The city’s got a very conservative approach towards budgeting responsibly and that keeps us in a healthy state as a city. There is always a balance between what’s best for the city and what’s best for the employees.”

Stone said they are still in the process of “assessing the landscape and assessing priorities” as to what the best approach will be between what the city needs and what the employees need. He noted that most of the officers are more senior and have been with the department longer, so they may not have steps left in their scales. Stone said depending on the rank and the change of the labor grade some employees could be off the grid.

Stone said he hoped negotiations would not last a year like it did for the firefighters. He said it was a time drain for both the union and personnel department. Stone said a drawn-out process can hamper employee morale and hurt the city’s budgeting process.

“Negotiations are a necessity,” he said. “But it’s better to be productive and get them done, as quickly and efficiently as possible … it can have an impact on the whole city of negotiations with any bargaining unit get drawn out.”

Martel said six members of his local spent about 100 hours each working on analysis and preparation before even sitting down with the city.

“Certainly, for the amount of work we put into it, some people would say, ‘Boy, for the amount of time you put into it, you didn’t get much,’” he said. “But it was kind of about getting to ‘yes’ … in a somewhat timely fashion.”

Martel added that firefighters were a part of the community. They know what city officials are going through trying to write budgets and they too could see what the Great Recession was doing the city, “with all the foreclosure signs up and everything … we know what’s going on. No one is isolated from this recession.”