New Orleans Fire Fighters’ Battle Over Pay Continues

IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger and New Orleans, LA Local President Nick Felton participated in a local radio talk show interview regarding the fire fighters’ pay dispute with Mayor Ray Nagin.

(Updated February 16, 2007) -- The Times-Picayune is reporting that a Louisiana state judge has ordered the City of New Orleans to recalculate how it will pay New Orleans Local 632 fire fighters for years of unpaid raises. This is the latest development in the fire fighters’ longstanding pay dispute with the city.

“It’s time for the city and the mayor to honor its financial commitment to the fire fighters and compensate them as mandated by law,” says IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger. “This has gone on too long.” 

Read the Times-Picayune stories:
Judge orders city to recalculate firefighter pay (02/07/07)
Firefighter pay battle continues (01/31/07)  

Low wages have made it increasingly difficult for the department to hire and retain fire fighters. The department has 255 fewer fire fighter positions today than it did pre-Hurricane Katrina. Currently, there are 515 fire fighters — compared to the more than 770 in August 2005, when the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast.

New Orleans Local 632 struggles to recover from Hurricane Katrina in other ways. Firehouses are in disrepair, damaged equipment hasn’t been repaired or replaced, and fire fighters are using their own money to buy toilet paper. Staffing has fallen from four fire fighters to three on most apparatus. Fire fighters also continue to work out of FEMA-issued trailers because repairs to firehouses are incomplete. A trailer and the two-man crew inside spun into the air when a tornado hit February 9, crashing into the nearby dilapidated firehouse and landing on its side. Read the Times Picayune story, "Engine 12 team finds strength in duty."

Read more on the despair and disrepair of the New Orleans Fire Department:
New Orleans fire department answers the bell, NBC News (02/06/07)
Festering facilities anger firefighters, The Times-Picayune (01/29/07)

The salary dispute is arguably the one issue causing the most outrage among Local 632 members because fire fighters have grappled with it for decades.

Mayor Nagin, who is in his second term, failed to authorize annual 2 percent longevity increases for fire fighters, even though the state legislature in Louisiana mandated the increase. The Supreme Court upheld the legality of the mandated raises in 2001, leaving the Nagin administration to cope with a massive financial obligation created by years of unpaid raises.

On November 8, 2006, Civil District Judge Kern Reese ordered the city to begin paying fire fighters the 2 percent longevity raises immediately. In his ruling, Reese said the pay dispute “has languished for more than 25 years. The time has now arrived for the City of New Orleans . . . to compensate its fire fighters as mandated by law.”

Fire fighters also are in line for a 10 percent salary increase. In July 2006, Nagin announced plans to raise salaries by 10 percent for all police officers and to boost the annual starting pay for rookie fire fighters by $5,300. However, Nagin failed to include raises for all fire fighters in his proposal, and Local 632 leaders blasted the mayor for failing to recognize the sacrifices of veteran fire fighters. It was the fourth time he passed over fire fighters. All other New Orleans public employees received 10 percent raises in late 2006.

Ultimately, Local 632 convinced the New Orleans City Council to overrule Nagin, and the Civil Service Commission finally agreed to give all fire fighters a raise, although it modified the increases for fire recruits, lowering it from $5,300 to $3,900. The Commission made the adjustment because the proposed $5,300 increase would have pushed the starting hourly wage for a fire department trainee higher than a first-year fire fighter’s salary.

That wage hike was intended to boost the annual salary for a new fire fighter to $19,896 annually, or $9.17 an hour. Both the 2 percent annual longevity raise and 10 percent wage increase should have been reflected in the fire fighters’ paychecks on January 26. But the pay of approximately 70 fire fighters actually went down January 26. Others got an increase, but not the amount expected.