PETE WEILAND
St. Johns County
Publication Date: 09/18/09
It appears that the entire community is up in arms over the issue of the county's obligation to make contracted pay increases to the county's firefighters union and the union's unwillingness to voluntarily forego the increase. The Board of County Commissioners signed a 3-year binding contract with the union, but gave little or no forethought to the possible consequences. It was no surprise at that time that the economy was going to hell in a hand basket. Property values were falling like rocks, foreclosures and unemployment were skyrocketing throughout the county and the state was deeply embroiled in massive budget cutting concerns.
A glaring part of the problem with this issue is the terminology being used by both sides. Terms such as raises, step increases, merit steps, COLA's -- all cause confusion with those that are unfamiliar with them. Here are some simple explanations: a raise is a raise -- the administration and union agree that salaries need to be increased across the board in order to recruit more employees and/or retain the ones they have, so the entire pay scale is adjusted to reflect these increases. A step increase, or merit step is the pre-determined pay scale level that is contractually agreed upon by both sides usually based on the tenure of the employee and the score of their annual evaluation. A COLA is a cost-of-living increase, usually given to all employees, union or not, to keep pace with the inflation rate and is in no way to be considered a "raise."
Another problem to note is the administration/County Commission's lack of "good faith bargaining." As far as I understand, the union agreed to forgo their step increase this year in return for the guarantee that there would be no layoffs during the same period. The administration/County Commission apparently refused. They want to have their cake and eat it too. What is to stop the administration from not laying off firefighters even after the union agrees to forgo the step increase? Plus, with this agreement, the union would be secure in their jobs, the administrators would be able to meet their financial needs and most importantly, the citizens would not suffer any loss of service, face a higher millage or have their insurance rates increase as well.
In stark contrast to this issue is that the city's firefighter union, Local 2282, and the city's administration worked hard to come to a contractual agreement that both sides could live with. I am certain that each side had hoped to glean more from the negotiations process, but ultimately the citizens of the city were served by an agreement being reached. The city had the foresight to suspend step increases last year, why didn't the county? The firefighters agreed to forgo their raises again this year. In addition, three years ago the city firefighters only received a 0.4 percent step increase. That's three years in which firefighters should have earned six percent in step increases, yet only received 0.4 percent. However, during that same period, the city administration made other agreements outside of salary issues that served to benefit the firefighters and had little or no economic impact to the citizens. When the economic climate improves, the hope is that the firefighters will be able to regain the steps that were lost during this recession.
The ultimate test of where any citizen stands on this issue is that if you had a contract with your employer that afforded you an increase in pay, would you voluntarily forgo it?
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Pete Weiland is president of IAFF Local 2282, The Professional Firefighters of St. Augustine. He is in his ninth year as a St. Augustine firefighter/engineer.
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