City's error gives pay raises to firefighters

From The Arizona Republic, June 8

CHANDLER, AZ – A slip-up by Chandler officials is forcing the city to give firefighters merit pay raises next year when other employees' salaries are expected to be frozen.

That's not sitting well with the police union, which has declared an impasse in contract negotiations and is pushing the City Council for merit increases before members vote on a budget June 24.

Firefighters are getting raises and police officers are not because the Chandler chapter of United Phoenix Firefighters did not open negotiations at the end of the previous contract.

Under city law either the union or the city has to open negotiations or the terms of the previous contract are automatically renewed for another year. The 2009-10 firefighters' contract included merit raises.

City Manager Mark Pentz and Human Resources Director Debbie Stapleton said the unions have always initiated negotiations, usually to seek pay increases.

When the firefighters' union did not notify the city that they intended to open negotiations the city missed the Nov. 1 deadline to start the process, Pentz said, adding the city should have initiated the talks and missing the deadline was an oversight.

"We just weren't looking at it because in past years it was always the unions wanting to negotiate," he said. "The police could have done the same thing."

The Chandler Law Enforcement Association took its request for merit increases to the City Council during a special meeting Monday night. Under the voter-approved 2004 "meet and confer" charter amendment, municipal labor unions may go directly to the council with demands if they can't agree with negotiators.

Strikes are prohibited and the council has final say.

Council members sent the union back to negotiations but not before several indicated they would not approve pay increases unless cuts were made elsewhere to balance the cost.

Mayor Boyd Dunn encouraged the union to consider a one-year contract instead of a three-year agreement in case the economy improved in 2011.

CLEA president Shawn Hancock said before the meeting that the police union doesn't have a problem with the firefighters' raises, just with how the city is trying to cut promised pay increases for everyone else.

"With the fire union, the city got caught sleeping," he said.

Merit pay is a stepped salary increase promised to new hires and granted only during their first eight years in a position, Hancock said.

"When we were recruited, everybody was told this is what would happen," he said.

But the firefighters' raises and what led to them weren't discussed during the public session.

Hancock told the council, "I think a couple of mistakes were made by the city manager."

Dunn responded, "I think I know what you're talking about, and we're not going to get into those areas."

Stapleton has said the city's budget forecasts are so grim that it is likely employees will have to forgo raises for five years.

According to a memo that defended the city's position in the police union negotiations, giving all municipal employees merit raises over the next five years would create $4 million to $7 million budget shortfalls every year; eliminating the raises could end shortfalls by 2013.

Hancock said all police officers took a small pay cut of less than 1 percent last year so those in the early years of their careers could receive one-time 5 percent merit raises.

"We didn't see any top city officials taking cuts," he said.