By Bernard Harris
The Intelligencer Journal/New Era
LANCASTER, Pa. — With Pennsylvania’s capital city in financial distress, Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson last week told her city’s firefighters that she intends to change their work schedule and close a fire station.
Her proposed 2011 budget calls for the elimination of 10 fire positions.
The belt-tightening moves follow the recommendation of a consultant’s report that contends the moves will increase efficiency and lower the cost of the paid fire department.
Lancaster has gotten the same message from the same source.
Management Partners, the Ohio consulting company that studied Harrisburg government operations, was in Lancaster three years ago.
As in Harrisburg, the consultant recommended changing firefighter staffing to a 24-hours-on and 48-hours-off schedule. As in Lancaster, firefighters currently work two day shifts and two night shifts that are followed by four days off, the Patriot-News newspaper reported.
The firefighters’ union president immediately pushed back, saying Thompson can’t change the schedule without negotiating with the union.
A Thompson spokesman responded that the mayor does not need to negotiate to lay off workers.
Under the state’s distressed city law, Harrisburg must file a plan that proposes a pathway to solvency. That plan likely will include the 24-hour schedule.
Lancaster is on better financial footing than Harrisburg. Mayor Rick Gray is proposing a budget for the coming year that does not increase real estate taxes nor draw down further on the city’s reserves.
Yet he has been trying for more than a year to reach an agreement with the city’s firefighters to accept the 24-hour schedule.
Doing so would save the city at least $400,000 annually, he said.
“We tried to work it out. We were just unable to come to an agreement that was satisfactory to everyone,” Gray said Wednesday.
Discussions between union representatives and members of Gray’s administration began in earnest after firefighters rejected wage concessions that would have saved four jobs.
Along with a reduced pay increase of 1 percent instead of 3.25 percent, Gray was asking for the schedule change to be negotiated.
Gray blamed the failure of discussions since the January union vote on his decision to eliminate two more firefighter positions in his proposed 2011 budget. That budget will come before City Council members for a vote this month.
Tim Erb, who was elected president of International Association of Fire Fighters Local 319 on Thursday, said he believes Lancaster firefighters could be persuaded to approve 24-hour staffing.
“It would have to go to a full vote, but under the right circumstances, I think it would be voted in,” Erb said Sunday.
Those circumstances include being compensated for the additional hours, he said. Last year, when the schedule was discussed, firefighters complained of the disruption the schedule change would cause in their lives, and of the additional 312 hours they would be expected to work over the course of a year.
Firefighters currently work an average of 42 hours a week, Erb said.
Erb, a 20-year city firefighter, said city negotiators walked away after firefighters presented a counter-proposal to the city 48-hour work week plan. Firefighters would change to the 24-hour/48-hour schedule if they could have a 45-hour work week and a 4 percent increase in “longevity” payments.
Gray on Sunday declined to comment on the specific proposals, contending the issue was still under negotiation.
Regarding the firefighters’ counter-offer, Gray would say only: “The idea behind a 24-hour schedule was to save the city money.”
Erb contended the firefighters’ proposal would have “met them half-way” with an annual savings to the city of $210,000.
“If we could have saved $200,000, I think we would have done it,” Gray responded.
Management Partners recommendation to the city was to change the schedule because it would allow the fire bureau to provide the same level of staff coverage with three platoons instead of four.
By consolidating the units and changing the work times, there would be more firefighters on duty at all times even though fewer firefighters would be employed by the city, Gray said.
There would be more coverage when firefighters are out sick or on vacation, he said. The city now has to pay a significant amount of overtime when a fire occurs and off-duty personnel are called in for backup, the mayor said.
Pat Brogan, Gray’s chief of staff, said the schedule change would provide fire coverage with six fewer firefighters. Those positions would be eliminated as firefighters quit or retire, she said.
“This was an attempt to reduce force size through attrition without layoffs,” Brogan said.
Gray said there are no plans to change the schedule since they were unable to come to an agreement with the union.
Yet, he said, the union contract will be renegotiated next year. Gray is certain it will be a part of those negotiations.
Erb is also expecting the schedule issue to return.
“I think it will be asked for and I would assume that they will go back to it if that is truly what they want,” he said.
Copyright 2010 Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.