Six-month process moves city, fire union closer to contract agreement

The Fulton Professional Firefighters Union and the city of Fulton will continue working on the finalization of a new contract for the union. The Fulton City Council voted to give the negotiations a 60-day timeline before rules for firefighters will default to the updated city employee manual.
The Fulton Professional Firefighters Union and the city of Fulton will continue working on the finalization of a new contract for the union. The Fulton City Council voted to give the negotiations a 60-day timeline before rules for firefighters will default to the updated city employee manual.

Fulton fire union members have called an outdated pay scale the catalyst to six months of contract negotiations between the city of Fulton and the Fulton Professional Firefighters Union.

The current contract, drafted in 2004, states that starting pay for a Fulton firefighter is $8.65 per hour. Before taxes, a firefighter at $8.65 per hour earns $21,590.40 annually. That starting pay isn't enough, said fire union representative Todd Gray who is also a fire engineer for the city, especially when he looked at Missouri's minimum wage, which is $7.65 per hour.

"It's a dollar more to be a (Fulton) firefighter," Gray said. "That just doesn't seem right."

After firefighters accrue experience, their pay rates can increase. Of Fulton's current seven firefighters, the average yearly salary is $26,553.87, with the lowest hourly rate at the city's starting pay and highest at $13.81. The average hourly pay comes to about $10.64. Fulton has 12 fire engineers at the moment, a position promoted to from the firefighter status after an evaluation, and they earn an annual average of $32,337.76. The engineers' salary range is between $27,456 and about $47,000.

Attracting and retaining firefighters

The fire union has a problem with starting pay, which Gray said can deter potential employees. Gray said he has noticed a recent trend in the Fulton Fire Department: more firefighters leaving, mainly because of pay.

Within the past three years, Gray said six firefighters have left the department for higher wages elsewhere, taking with them experience and training they earned in Fulton. Two fire employees left as recently as February and April.

"I've been with the department for 13 years and that was uncommon. It was nothing for someone to fulfill their career at the Fulton Fire Department and stay 20, 25, 30 years. And, we're losing that. That's one of the reasons why people are leaving because it's hard to support a family on $10 per hour," Gray said. "We're hoping with trying to increase that salary base a little bit, it'll help. You spend the time and effort on training them, you'd hope for the city to benefit from keeping that experience on, instead of every year having two or three new employees that you have to train, and then lose that experience to another department. Other communities are benefiting from that time and service we vested."

The union, Gray said, would like Fulton's pay to be comparable to that other fire departments. Gray said the union is requesting starting pay increased to $10 per hour for entry-level firefighters and $12.75 for starting fire engineers.

When drafting its 2015 budget, the city budgeted a five percent pay increase for all of its employees, but the union didn't feel the bump was enough and requested 10 percent, hoping to set a pay scale comparable to other fire departments. The city denied the counter offer, and the union later accepted the five percent increase.

According the information provided by Fulton's Human Resources Director Michelle Maupin, 12 fire employees have quit in the past 10 years, an average of 1.2 per year. That's a 5 percent turnover rate of voluntary terminations. Within a five-year range from 2015, the rate has increased by two percent and averaged to 1.6 fire employees leaving annually.

Those numbers are ones City Administrator Bill Johnson said he's satisfied with. After an Internet search, Johnson said he discovered that a "happy turnover rate" is anything less than 15 percent, generally.

"I'm thrilled with the turnover rate we have," Johnson said.

Salary survey says

Pay negotiations have, in part, been rooted in findings of a salary survey Maupin conducted over the past five months. Although it has not yet been finalized, Maupin shared her findings with the Fulton Sun. The salary survey compares the Fulton Fire Department to other fire departments in municipalities of a similar population range to Fulton's 12,790 residents. It considers other factors than pay, including the amount of full-time employees, number of fire stations, required certifications like Firefighter I and II, raises, rate at which employees receive a paycheck, schedule, hours per pay period and overtime pay.

Comparing Fulton Fire's starting annual pay to that of other fire departments, Fulton comes up short, according to the salary survey. Maupin received results from 11 comparably-populated cities as small as Trenton (population: 6,001 and starting annual pay for a firefighter at $26,500) to as large as Kirksville (population: 17,304 and a starting annual pay for a firefighter at $30,263).

Cities closest to Fulton's size are Webb City, Maryville, West Plains and Moberly. Here are the findings for Fulton and those cities:

•Fulton: 12,790 population; $21,590.40 starting annual pay, requiring Firefighter I and II certifications; $8.65 starting hourly rate; and schedule of 24 hours on/48 hours off.

•Webb City: 11,676 population; $28,547 starting annual pay (difference of $6,957 to Fulton); $9.75 starting hourly rate; and schedule of 24 hours on/24 hours off in a five-day period, off four consecutive days and repeated.

•Maryville: 11,972 population; $23,816 starting annual pay (difference of $2,226 to Fulton); $11.45 starting hourly rate; and schedule of eight hours shifts, Monday-Friday and on-call weekends.

•West Plains: 11,986 population; $23,969.60 starting annual pay (difference of $2,379 to Fulton), requiring Firefighter I and II certifications; $10.55 starting hourly rate; and schedule of 24 hours on/24 hours off.

•Moberly: 13,741 population; $25,174 starting annual pay (difference of $3,584 to Fulton), requiring Firefighter I and II certifications; $8.97 starting hourly rate; and schedule of 24 hours on/24 hours off.

Matter of employment factors

Maupin said that while salary is a factor in the employment process, it's not the only one.

"Specifically for a fire department, our starting wages are a little bit lower than average," she said. "However, whenever I compare the city of Fulton to other similarly populated municipalities, the benefits are right there in line. The salaries are not very far off. We have more fire department staff than most of the other municipalities in our range, and even some compared to more populated municipalities we have more staff."

The city of Fulton employs 24 in its fire department, three of which are captains, one the assistant fire chief and one the chief, according to Maupin. Fulton offers health insurance for full-time employees. A single employee pays $22.50 per month for insurance, or $0 if the Wellness Incentive is obtained. The employee-child, employee-spouse and employee-family rates are $400 per month plus $5.24 per month for each dependant. The city of Fulton also offers a deferred compensation plan, matching up to three percent. And it participates in Lagers, a retirement plan for government employees across Missouri; employees contribute four percent to Lagers each pay period. The employer contribution is 11.2 percent with five-year vesting.

Of the 12 firefighters who quit the department in the past 10 years, Johnson said four have asked to come back. He said while the grass may be greener elsewhere in terms of pay, employees who leave miss Fulton's benefits.

"For every city employee, if pay was their sole source of job satisfaction, they could go to another city for more money," Johnson said.

He added that Fulton can't compete with pay scales in the mid-Missouri area, because Fulton is a "small town that doesn't have the revenue to be the top payroll in the area."

Firefighters request more say in policies

When the fire union approached the city about negotiations in November, it presented an entirely new document - one Johnson said was double in size of the current 20-page contract.

Gray said the union drafted an entirely new document in order to gain clarity. He added that the union did this after researching contracts from other fire departments.

"It was a lot different than what ours was. We took a little bit from other departments and made a new proposal. After sitting down and doing this, it was probably just too much. It was just too much for both sides, really. But, I think, in the future, we can probably pick one or two articles out and tweak those so that it's not everything all at once. And, overtime, give other stuff more clarity and worked out."

Negotiators on the city's side have been Johnson, Maupin, Assistant City Administrator Jerry Sorte and Fire Chief Dean Buffington, and for the union, Gray and Fire Engineer Merit McLeod. They have been in the twice-a-month discussions, missing two meetings in the six-month span. Johnson recently took himself out of the negotiations, not wanting to be perceived as the contract's final decision maker. When he was in discussions, however, he said he wanted to know how the city and its citizens would benefit from each piece of the contract.

"We would ask it on individual items, but individual items are not approved by the city council. The entire document is what will be either approved or denied by the city council," Johnson said. "So, every item needs to answer that question, that it's good for the city and its citizens. If there's even one item in the contract that the city council doesn't agree with, they'll vote it down."

Gray said the fire union would like more say in city policies, providing further input to the rules and procedures implemented at the fire department.

"(Firefighters want to be involved in) policy making, so it's not a one-sided view so they have the firefighters in that process to agree upon policy that's attainable and doable," Gray said. "...Sometimes, when you have just one person involved they might overlook something. It's just to help enhance the service that we provide to the community and so we have a couple of other people looking at it saying, "Hey, we ought to try it this way. Research has proven it would be better this way.' Something to that effect."

Some of these requests for increased involvement, Johnson said, are not plausible, such as the union being able to hire and interview potentially new firefighters and setting up rules the firefighters work under.

"I don't know too many people who are going to make up their own rules at work," Johnson said.

But for the firefighters, Gray said it all comes back to providing the best service possible for the community.

"We're here to provide the best service for the community and we want to try to provide the best service for the community. If the job requires something a little different than what other departments get to help provide that service, then our intention would be to give that better service," Gray said. "As a whole, I understand that they have to treat all city employees the same and they're not going give one benefit to one department and not to the others. So, typically when we try to figure some stuff out we think of that, also with the city as a whole, what the effect is going to be financially ... We're not looking for special treatment."

Hopeful to reach an agreement

In the end, the city and the union expressed there will be a positive end result for both parties. At its Tuesday meeting, the Fulton City Council approved a 60-day timeline before the current contract is terminated. When given notice of the timeline, Johnson, Maupin and Gray stated the most recent meeting on May 22 was productive.

Assistant City Administrator Jerry Sorte said he believes they will meet that deadline.

"I'm optimistic that we'll have a draft ready to be approved by the city council within the next 60 days," he said. "That could change, but at least at the trajectory we're going, we'll have a draft for them to consider."

Gray said he thinks the negotiations will end before the 60-day mark.

"I was a little concerned at first, but once we sat down Friday (May 22) and all the information was provided, both sides were giving and taking, and when it's all said and done, I think it's going to be a document that both sides can live with. It's going to help the community, provide it with better service, with retention. I'm hoping that the pay part keeps experience around and we don't have that rotation coming through. I think we'll be fine."