San Antonio Express-News

By Molly Smith,Staff writer

June 25, 2024

The city increased its salary offer for firefighters a little more on Tuesday — but it’s still thousands of dollars apart from the firefighters’ union on pay as a critical deadline looms.

City staff will present the proposed annual budget to the City Council on Aug. 15. If it’s to include a new compensation package for San Antonio Fire Department employees, the city has to reach a tentative agreement with the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association soon.

“Our window is getting more narrow by the day,” Deputy City Manager María Villagómez told reporters after Tuesday’s bargaining session.

On Tuesday, the city raised its pay offer by 1%, boosting SAFD employees’ base pay by $2,400 on Oct. 1, 2024, followed by an immediate 7% increase. The next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, 2025, would see a 5% raise, and the third year of the contract would see a 3.5% increase.

An entry-level firefighter who currently earns a base salary of $57,576 would see their salary rise to $69,741 by Oct. 1, 2026, under this proposal.

Union negotiators did not present a counteroffer on pay Tuesday.

Their most recent proposal, unveiled Monday, would similarly raise base pay by $2,400, but would increase wages 11% in the first year of the contract, 9% in the second year and 7% in the third. That would raise an entry-level firefighters’ pay to $77,645 by 2026.

Union leaders are looking to make up ground they believe members lost on pay in their current labor contract  — the result of the union’s decision to have a panel of arbitrators hammer out a new contract because of a six-year stalemate between the city and the firefighters’ association.

The current contract ends Dec. 31.

“Many firefighters did not agree with that process,” said union President Joe Jones, who was first elected in 2021 after Chris Steele stepped down as head of the association. “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 reality is that in the past it was bad strategy and it was poor leadership,” Jones told reporters.

Still, if wages don’t increase substantially, the department will “keep hemorrhaging talent,” he said.

A new sticking point for the association is the city’s proposed switch to how overtime pay is calculated. Currently, after a firefighter works 56 hours or a paramedic works 42 hours — regardless of whether any of those hours were vacation or sick leave — they are paid time-and-a-half for additional hours worked. The city now wants overtime pay to kick in only after someone has worked their required hours. That’s how overtime is calculated for civilian city employees.

The cost savings from that switch would be used to pay for the proposed wage increases, Villagómez said.

“The feedback that we’re getting from our members is if that’s the way they want to go, then they’re not going to accept the overtime (shifts) because they’re going to be paid straight time, not time-and-a-half,” Jones said.

The five-year labor contract that the city entered into with the San Antonio Police Officers in 2022 calculates overtime pay the same way as the current fire contract. Villagómez indicated to reporters that the city would be looking to make the same change to a future police contract.

The city and union will return to the bargaining table sometime in July. No dates have been set yet.