As 2010 comes to a close, I’m sure many of you are anxious to turn the page on what has been a very difficult year for so many affiliates.

Even as economists say things are getting better, our members throughout North America continue to face tight local budgets resulting in brownouts, layoffs, pension attacks and a climate that has resulted in difficult labor negotiations for many affiliates.

It has been a challenging year, but we also managed to accomplish some amazing work in 2010.

Our soup-to-nuts effort to reform and promote the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant program has helped put more than 1,700 fire fighters back on the frontlines.

The SAFER program, which originated in the office of the late Senator Ted Kennedy the week following the 9/11 attacks as a tribute to our fallen brothers and sisters, may be this union’s most significant achievement yet. In years to come, SAFER will be remembered as a bold shovel-ready program that worked. It put our members back to work. It helped keep fire departments fully staffed. It boosted public safety when short-sighted local officials threatened to cut public safety to the bone.

In the coming year, another lucrative round of SAFER grants will be awarded to affiliates, bringing as many as 4,000 more members back to work who had been laid off and filling jobs that had been lost through attrition.

I hope you read our story in this issue about the faces of SAFER – the men and women who went back to work because their department received a SAFER grant.

That wasn’t our only accomplishment in 2010.

Our members stepped up to the plate this summer during the IAFF 50th Convention in San Diego.

Passage of Resolution 24 allows us to have the resources to fight back. On November 22, I appointed former San Diego Local 145 President Ron Saathoff to head the IAFF’s new Pension Resources Department. Because of this new initiative, we will now have access to pension experts, prepare a web-based pension resource that will be available to affiliate leaders, create a preferred provider list of actuaries and pension experts and establish a database that will help us compare and contrast pension plans.

While the creation of our pension department represents a profound achievement in 2010, we know it will be a tremendous asset in the coming year because pensions are the new battlefront.

We have been stung and a bit alarmed by the increasingly nasty rhetoric our opponents have used in the past year to attack public-sector workers. Anti-labor forces and their allies on Wall Street have always looked upon our pensions as a burden, and they have painted fire fighters and other public employees as overcompensated and undeserving. They don’t want the public to look behind the Wall Street curtain. They want to point fingers at us.

This fight is not over.

Emboldened by the outcome of the mid-term elections, conservative governors have made it clear that they plan to continue targeting public employee unions. Several governors said unions are the enemy and called for trimming pay and benefits for public employees.

In state after state, we know what we’re up against.

And following the mid-term elections, we know what we’re up against in Congress. With divided control of Congress, it is clear that getting labor-friendly legislation through Congress will be nearly impossible in light of the gridlock and lack of consensus on controversial issues.

The Republican Party scored significant gains on November 2, winning at least 60 seats and control of the U.S. House of Representatives and reducing the Democratic Party’s majority in the U.S. Senate.

The 112th Congress will be decidedly more fiscally and socially conservative.

However, the IAFF is a rare union that enjoys friends on both sides of the political aisle, and that has led us to achieve success in the past with GOP majorities. Speaker of the House-designate John Boehner (R-OH) has been a long-time recipient of IAFF and FIREPAC support.

Many of Boehner’s presumptive committee chairs have also benefited from the trademark “gold and black” IAFF support, including Representative Dave Camp (MI) in Ways and Means, Representative Peter King (NY) on Homeland Security, future Budget Committee Chair Representative Paul Ryan (WI), Representative Howard “Buck” McKeon (CA) in Armed Services, Representative John Kline (MN) in Education and Labor, as well as two of the candidates for the top spot on the Energy Committee – Representative Fred Upton (MI) and Representative John Shimkus (IL) and various incoming subcommittee chairs on the Appropriations Committee.

Our bipartisanship makes the IAFF unique among labor unions and other advocacy groups, and I’m proud of that. Because of bipartisanship, we are willing and able to work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

And I believe we can be effective in the 112th Congress, despite the new political landscape. In fact, some of the most important pro-labor legislation was passed under a GOP-controlled Congress.

The IAFF negotiated with the Reagan administration for improvements to the Fair Labor Standards Act to provide overtime pay and other benefits for fire fighters. SAFER was enacted under President George W. Bush – with a GOP-controlled Congress. The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed by President George H.W. Bush.

I think we can be proud of what we did in 2010, and I hope we can navigate the new political landscape and the challenging economy in 2011 so we emerge stronger than ever.

Have a happy and safe holiday season, and get ready for what will no doubt be a busy 2011.