Oops.
The contract rejected Tuesday by 93 percent of the roughly 2,900 firefighters voting would have taken a similar approach, granting a pay raise in exchange for concessions on members’ ability to take leave. With the no vote, as of July 1 members of Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association Local 341 enter an “evergreen” period under their prior contract that would run through 2016 unless a new agreement is approved.
The evergreen situation would provide no raises, but imposes few effective caps on how many firefighters can take time off, raising questions about whether the department’s proposed $507 million budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 includes enough money to cover overtime costs, and whether HFD will repeat the fiscal woes of recent months.
“Make no mistake about it, this is a resounding statement that the firefighters are together on this. That the concessions are too high, that giving back was enough,” said fire union president Bryan Sky-Eagle, whose team negotiated the deal. “I’m very optimistic we’ll go back to the table and find out what went wrong and try to fix it.”
Parker said the city is willing to return to the bargaining table. She said it is far from clear, however, that the union will be able to win more favorable terms from a city council that opposed hiking HFD’s overtime budget earlier this year and is poised to vote Wednesday on several items that would cut her proposed $2.4 billion general fund budget.
“If they want to come back with the idea of significant pay raises in the next year, I’m just going to have to say it will be seriously impacted by what Council does, and my sense of the mood of Council is they’re not wanting to put a whole lot more money in the budget,” the mayor said.
See here for the background. Sky-Eagle negotiated the deal with the city, so I can only wonder where the disconnect was. The issues with overtime are real and not going anywhere on their own, so one way or another this is going to have to be dealt with. I presume they’ll figure it out eventually. The Chron editorial board has more.
The deal effectively saved the city millions, all at the expense of the workers. Taking money out of one pocket by lowering overtime and assignment pay in order to fund a modest pay raise for the other pocket is hardly much of a deal. Bryan had to know that going into the news conference so maybe he has a method to his madness but don’t expect the rank & file workers to give up $120 for $80 and call it a “good deal” for anyone other than the city.