From The News Journal, June 16

WILMINGTON, DE – Wilmington's firefighters union, by a single vote, rejected the city's offer to accept a wage freeze this year, which means eight firefighters will be laid off July 1, officials said Tuesday.

The vote, taken Monday, was 58 to 57, city Communications Director John Rago said. There are 170 firefighters in the union.

“It is unfortunate that 58 firefighters, a clear minority of the union's members, have decided that a pay raise is more important than their fellow fire colleagues,” Mayor James M. Baker said. “Their own union, charged with preserving jobs of firefighters, has not caused them to lose their jobs.”

Firefighters union President Kevin Turner declined comment on the vote.

But he did say that the union filed an unfair labor practice against the city Monday with the state Public Employees Relations Board, saying the city bargained in bad faith during talks with the firefighters union on its recently signed contract.

“Within days of city council ratifying the contract, the Baker administration came back to us and asked us to give up a 2.25 percent salary increase that they had just agreed to give us,” he said.