Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By TY TAGAMI and DAVID PENDERED
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Georgia)
Atlanta’s firefighters are protesting Mayor Shirley Franklin’s decision to give police a raise but not them.
Franklin hopes to reduce attrition in the Atlanta Police Department by boosting pay by 3.5 percent, beginning in July. The mayor wants to give police officers $3.8 million in surplus funds while offering no raises to other city employees, including firefighters.
So far this year, Atlanta has hired 68 officers and has lost 64, leaving the 1,641-member Police Department with 145 vacancies.
Firefighters, as they have done in prior years when Franklin did not treat them equally, descended on City Hall on Monday to demand equal pay.
Capt. Joe Hussey was among about two dozen firefighters who attended the council meeting seeking “parity” with police. He promised that he and his colleagues would take their protest to the streets.
“No matter what we do,” Hussey said, “we can’t get anything. The T-shirt says it all.” Like the others, he wore a red T-shirt printed for the occasion with the words. “Atlanta values firefighters 0%.”
By protesting in years past, firefighters have persuaded the City Council to raise their pay higher than what Franklin initially proposed.
Franklin said this year’s plan to raise police pay was purely a business decision. While the police department is losing officers, the fire department has a stable workforce, she said.
“It’s not unjust,” Franklin said in an interview last week, after sending her budget recommendation to the council. “There’s nothing inherent about everybody making the same amount of money.”
The council is expected to begin deliberations on the police raises when the finance committee meets next week.
Lt. James Daws, president of the Atlanta Professional Firefighters, hopes to sway council members to give his colleagues a similar pay increase.
He said the mayor’s “vendetta” against his department had been devastating to morale and has inspired arguments between police officers and firefighters who must work together in emergencies.
“They feel like we’re holding them back, and we feel like we’re being cheated,” he said.
Daws said it would cost $1.8 million to give firefighters the same raise as police. Though the fire department is well-staffed, especially with 78 new recruits coming on line soon, he said, it will begin to see higher attrition in coming years as older firefighters retire.
Daws admitted that firefighters don’t quit their jobs as readily as police. They are emotionally attached to their colleagues because they live together at fire stations, he said. And they have fewer job options elsewhere than police.
But that’s no reason for Franklin to pay them less, he said.
Chuck McKinney, a firefighter stationed at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, said Franklin was rewarding disloyalty.
“Our reward for being loyal to the fire department is less pay than the police,” he said. “Their reward for jumping ship is a pay raise. She is hurting morale in the fire department.”