SAN ANTONIO – Firefighter wages and overtime pay appear to be some of the biggest sticking points as the city and fire union extended their negotiations again on Tuesday.
But city negotiators hope they can get unstuck and strike a deal by the end of July so they can incorporate it into the Aug. 15 draft budget presentation.
Meanwhile, the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association (SAPFFA) is fighting its own history as it battles for big pay bumps for its members.
The City of San Antonio and SAPFFA sat down Tuesday for their tenth bargaining session. Both sides say they have made progress since the talks stalled in early May, but they’re still far apart on the biggest issue of the contract — base pay.
PAY PROPOSAL GAP
The city and union are now proposing a three-year contract that incorporates switching over $2,400 from previously separate incentive pay, like a clothing allowance.
It’s money union members were already getting, but putting it into the “base pay” portion of their paychecks means it will grow along with the annual raises instead of remaining flat.
The general form of their proposals may be close, but the union is still seeking much steeper pay raises than the city has been willing to offer.
The following graphs show the effect of the various city (blue) and union (red) proposals on pay for the lowest and highest-ranking firefighters. The darker lines represent the most recent proposal from each side.
City negotiators say their wage proposal is a package deal with a change to overtime pay calculations.
Right now, all paid hours — including sick days or vacation — count toward the threshold at which a firefighter can get paid the overtime rate of time-and-a-half.
The city wants to make it so only the hours a firefighter is actually on the job count toward that threshold.
“So that is something that we want to, make an adjustment again, just like any other civilian employee or any other employee in USAA or HEB that you have to physically work your hours, and then be eligible for that overtime rate,” Deputy City Manager Maria Villagomez, the city’s lead negotiator, told reporters.
The city says the savings it gets from the change to the overtime policy would go back to firefighters as a 1.68% pay increase, which was already rolled into its latest proposals.
“That makes it infinitely complex, right?” SAPFFA President Joe Jones told reporters. “So, you want us to pay for our own raises, and you put it as a stipulation that that’s attached to your wage offer. And our members are saying that’s not the right answer.”
The union has already agreed to drop a proposal to begin moving toward a 24-hour on, 72-hour off-shift rotation, something the city has said would require adding more than 400 firefighters.
The city and union have agreed to extend the negotiating period to July 30, but they have not yet scheduled additional sessions.
FIGHTING THE CLOCK
Though negotiations could theoretically last as long as both sides are willing to come to the table, the city is hoping to wrap things up more quickly.
City staff are in the midst of preparing the city’s draft budget for FY 2025, which will be unveiled Aug. 15. City Council will pass a final version before the end of September.
But until a new contract with the SAPFFA is signed, the San Antonio Fire Department’s portion of the budget remains uncertain.
A contract wouldn’t be final until both the union membership and city council have approved it, but Villagomez hopes they can agree to a tentative deal at the table by late July, which could then be plugged into the budget.
However, “as you all know, we’re always making changes till midnight the day before we propose,” she told reporters.
If a deal hasn’t been worked out by then, Villagomez said the city would use the cost of its own proposals as a placeholder, which would cost an estimated $81.8 million over three years.
The SAFD budget in FY 2024 was $373.7 million out of the $1.6 billion general fund.
The current contract expires at the end of the year.
A DECADE-OLD STRUGGLE
The city may be fighting the clock, but the union is fighting its own history and is eager to make up ground it lost on the last go-around.
For more than five years, firefighters’ pay stayed stagnant as the city and fire union tussled in court, at the ballot box, and at the negotiating table after the union’s previous contract ended in September 2014.
At the union’s request, a panel of arbitrators finally forced a deal on both sides in February 2020. However, it contained much smaller raises than what the union had hoped.
Altogether, it means firefighter pay has only risen 10.4% since October 2013, while inflation has grown 34.5%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“The reality is, in the past, it was bad strategy, and it was poor leadership,” said Jones, who has led the union since 2022.
Jones’ predecessor, Chris Steele, led the union in its battle against the city, which was helmed at the time by former City Manager Sheryl Sculley.
Sculley’s determination to have police officers and firefighters shoulder more of their health care costs, which she warned would otherwise overwhelm the city budget, put her at loggerheads with both public safety unions. The city also sued both unions over the inclusion of controversial “evergreen” clauses in their contracts.
The police union eventually struck a new five-year deal in 2016 that included 14.8% worth of raises, but Steele and the fire union continued to hold out.
SAPFFA even led a 2018 campaign to change the city charter so the union would have sole power to invoke binding arbitration during negotiations. The amendment was paired with two others, including a measure to cap the city manager’s pay and tenure — a move widely seen as a referendum on Sculley herself.
Voters approved the union’s arbitration power and the limits on the city manager position in the November 2018 election.
In July 2019, the union used its newfound power to call for binding arbitration.
Steele praised the arbitration award when it was handed down in February 2020, but he also left his term as SAPFFA president early when he retired from the department in August 2021.
After that drawn-out fight, Jones says firefighters’ current pay is no longer competitive, and the SAFD is losing firefighters to other departments.
He has also talked about how hard the past decade has been for firefighters and paramedics.
“I put a lot of responsibility on the (SAPFFA),” Jones told reporters, “I think that it was… It takes two, right? So you had city administration. You had union administration. They couldn’t get along. And 1,800 firefighters and paramedics suffered as a result.
“However, I can also say that the city benefited from us being an evergreen. Think about the millions of dollars that they saved on the contract they didn’t have to pay out. Where did that money go? What programs were launched? You know, what benefits did they get to have?”
Asked how much he thinks the city owes its firefighters, given the union was the one who demanded arbitration, Jones told reporters his focus is on the current situation and where the department falls on the “overall spectrum of competitive pay.”
“I wasn’t part of the process before. I didn’t agree with the process. Many firefighters did not agree with that process,” Jones said. “But we were taken down that route, and that route didn’t succeed, which is why I would rather talk about the present and future than I would about the past.”
The union is not eager to try arbitration again, and Jones has said he wants his members to be able to actually vote on a contract. The last time they had that opportunity was in 2009.