By Bruce Eggler
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
Over the loud protests of many firefighters, the New Orleans Civil Service Commission voted 4-0 Monday to raise most other city workers’ pay by 10 percent starting Nov. 1, and to raise the minimum wage for the lowest-paid of those workers to $7.50 an hour, as requested late last week by Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration.
If the package is ratified by the City Council, which seems likely, the raise would apply to all city workers except police — who received their own 10 percent raise effective Sept. 1 — and firefighters.
Instead of an across-the-board 10 percent raise for firefighters, the total salary package for the Fire Department is to be increased by 10 percent, retroactive to Sept. 1, meaning many firefighters would get more than 10 percent and some would get nothing.
A large contingent of firefighters crowded into the commission’s City Hall meeting room walked out audibly unhappy, mainly because the commission agreed to go along with the administration’s plan to count the $2.1 million annual increase in Fire Department pay against the millions the city owes firefighters in overdue longevity raises.
The firefighters contend the $2.1 million increase should be in addition to the longevity raises, which the Legislature mandated many years ago but the city long failed to implement.
Pegging the cost
Chief Administrative Officer Brenda Hatfield said the total package of increases, including the already-implemented police raises, would cost the city $3.1 million for the last four months of 2006 and $11 million for all of 2007.
She said the city can pay for the raises because of improvements in the city’s economy and revenue picture and the arrival of federal community disaster loans.
“We are committed to improving the pay and standard of living for all of our city employees. This administration understands that the cost of living has increased since Hurricane Katrina and the work load for city employees has doubled. In an effort to create balance, this administration has decided to take proactive measures in providing an adequate living wage,” Hatfield said.
The administration apparently intends to keep the city’s work force well below pre-Katrina levels for the foreseeable future. The city laid off about half its civilian workers last fall to save money.
The $7.50 minimum wage would represent a 22 percent hourly increase for the lowest-paid city workers. At the other end of the scale, the raises would handsomely benefit Nagin’s well-paid executive staff, many of whom earn more than $100,000 annually.
Ongoing court battle
Chief Deputy City Attorney Joseph DiRosa Jr. said that Civil District Judge Kern Reese, who is handling the court case involving the firefighters’ overdue longevity payments, agreed Friday to give the city credit in meeting the obligation for the raises firefighters got in 2005, which were 3.5 percent, 5.5 percent or 7.5 percent. Adding the new $2.1 million annual increase to the $1.3 million annual credit for the 2005 raises would leave the city only about $1 million a year short of catching up with the amount the courts have ruled it owes the firefighters, DiRosa said.
Hatfield said the city will try to add the final $1 million in its 2007 budget. “We commit ourselves to expediting that,” she told the commission.
But Louis Robein, the attorney for Fire Fighters Association Local 632, said that if the city had paid the 2 percent annual longevity raises years ago, as ordered by the state, the firefighters would be in line for a 10 percent raise on top of those, not in place of them. The city’s position “smacks of retaliation because they (the firefighters) were successful in their lawsuit” to make the city pay the longevity raises, he said.
DiRosa and Civil Service Commission members said firefighters should not necessarily benefit from every raise awarded to other city workers because they are the only workers who by state mandate get a 2 percent annual raise for 20 years, which cumulatively amounts to about 48 percent.
Comparing raises
With those built-in raises, DiRosa said, firefighters’ salaries increase four times faster than those of any other city employees, who get 2.5 percent longevity raises every five years.
He said counting the 10 percent increase in Fire Department pay as part of the longevity judgment is “the only financially responsible thing to do” because it will help “stop the bleeding” by which the city’s obligations under the judgment have continued to increase, putting it further and further in arrears even though it began paying the longevity raises four years ago.
But one firefighter in the audience shot back that the longevity raises are “money you already owe us” and shouldn’t be counted as a new 10 percent raise.
Another described the city’s position as “making us pay for our own raise out of our own pocket.”
Commission Chairman William Forrester said the goal is to get the pay for firefighters and all other city workers up to the Southern regional average.
But Fire Fighters Local 632 President Nick Felton said other cities pay firefighters as much as $44,000 a year, which he said is more than some Fire Department chiefs get in New Orleans.
Losing workers
Felton said the department is losing firefighters at the fastest rate in history, and Fire Superintendent Charles Parent said the department is 150 employees short, has an average of 100 more out each day because of injuries or illness, and could sign up only 13 hopefuls for the most recent class of recruits.
“We can’t hire people right now as fast as they are leaving,” he said.
Forrester said, “I wish we could make everyone happy, but we can’t.” He said he agreed with the administration that the 10 percent increase should count against the longevity judgment.
Robein said the final decision on that issue will be up to Reese, but DiRosa disagreed, saying it’s the city’s decision. The next hearing in the court case is set for Nov. 3.
Firefighters with less than three years’ seniority are not entitled to the state-mandated longevity raises, and the city has paid the raises to those with four to seven years’ seniority. Although these groups are not part of the court case and the judgment against the city, Hatfield said the city is seeking a way to give them a 10 percent raise as well.
None of Monday’s actions or arguments dealt with the city’s largest obligation to firefighters: an estimated $100 million or more in lump-sum payments, ranging from a few thousand dollars to several hundred thousand dollars, that are due to about 1,000 current and retired firefighters or their heirs to cover lost raises going back to 1990. How the city will pay that money remains unknown.