Firefighters making too much money?

[Cecelia5578]

http://www.sthelenastar.com/articles/20 ... 236585.txt

Opinion > Letters To The Editor
FIREFIGHTERS HAVE IT GOOD
Friday, April 09, 2010

Editor: American Canyon firefighters’ negotiations are a joke.

I thought I was doing well in the wine business. Had I had any real brains I would have become a firefighter. What a racket they have.

While I respect the work they do and the inherent dangers, they are greatly overpaid, work only two days a week (a third of which they sleep) and get to retire at 50 years old at 90 percent of their pay after working 30 years.

But maybe getting paid 90 percent of one’s maximum pay for another 25-30 years for doing nothing isn’t so unjust, as they received high salaries for working very little before they retired.

Of course, most of them supplement that high pay with second jobs to allay the boredom, as they have so much free time on their hands.

I don’t blame the firefighters. Good for them for getting as much as they can. The blame goes to the politicians and the government administrators. What do they care? It isn’t their money.

The blame also goes to the public (myself included) which is either ill-informed, too apathetic or too afraid to rock the boat to act. No wonder governments are going broke and our taxes are so high.

If I had run my two wineries like this I would have gone broke years ago.

Where do I sign up to be a firefighter? I can do that job two days a week and run my two wineries on the side. What a deal. I can’t wait.

And the American Canyon negotiators seemed to be content to be raising the retirement age to a whopping 55 for new recruits. They should be really proud of themselves.

Dario Sattui

Vintner

So, long story short, this winery owner in Sonoma County raises a ruckus by pointing out the high salaries and pretty decent pension plans that his local firefighters are getting, and thinks they are unfair.

The guy then posts a follow up on the winery Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_i ... 4271920402
criticizing the firefighters union, and comparing the situation to the city of Vallejo, where he alleges high public employee benefits/salaries helped contribute to the city's bankruptcy.

I'm always torn on these issues, since I have nothing against a robust public sector, and think most conservative/libertarian arguments in favor of free markets and privatization to be bunk, but still...how many cities can realistically afford those huge salaries? Recessions naturally make people in the private sector resentful of public employees, and I just have a hard time swallowing those 6 figure salaries for public employees.

Of course on the other other hand firefighters perform a necessary, dangerous and demanding job, and I doubt they are all lazy union bums. Though I don't see too many people supporting exorbitant pay increases for the military, for example.

[Isolder74]

Walk off a cliff, Moron. (Edit: referring to the Man in the article)

Firefighters risk their lives sometimes multiples times a day as a part of their Jobs. If they want to pay them a gold brick an hour, great! Firefighters are made of awesome that often gets forgotten. They deserve every penny they get, in fact for all they do every day, we don't pay them enough!

[Dartzap]

Maybe he wants to see them paid on commission?

Anyway - what's this claptrap about only working two days a week? Over here the Fire and Rescue service are usually the ones who have to cut out people from wrecked cars, shove fallen trees out the way, and pump water away from flooded areas - not exactly twice a week activities, even in the sticks.

[spaceviking]

Its weird how at no point he actually mentions how much a fireman makes a year; which is a little helpful in determining if they are over paid.

I also like how he just assumes he could be a fireman, despite the fact that most cities turn away most applicants.

[Cecelia5578]

The SF Chronicle posted an online database of Vallejo public employees salaries in connection to the story they did about Vallejo's bankruptcy a few years ago

http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/vallejo/?ap ... 9148004172

[jcow79]

Its weird how at no point he actually mentions how much a fireman makes a year; which is a little helpful in determining if they are over paid.

I also like how he just assumes he could be a fireman, despite the fact that most cities turn away most applicants.

His facebook post addresses that and is actually a much more thorough argument. I don't know anything about the specifics he cites though so I can't comment on the validity of his arguments.

[Isolder74]

Maybe he wants to see them paid on commission?

Anyway - what's this claptrap about only working two days a week? Over here the Fire and Rescue service are usually the ones who have to cut out people from wrecked cars, shove fallen trees out the way, and pump water away from flooded areas - not exactly twice a week activities, even in the sticks.

Maybe he is talking about the schedule of a firefighter in that they spend 2 - 3 days on the job 24/7 a week rather then 'banker's' hours for the entire week doing rotating shifts. More to the point if it is a busy day/night firefighters can end up not sleeping for a day while on duty hence why the station has beds for them to use while on the job. So he's looking at a firefighter assigned work day and crying because they get most of the week off while not even considering the fact that those works days are for the ENTIRE DAMN DAY!!!!!!

[Kuroji]

Seconded. A lot of people do not appreciate the danger that firefighters (and really, basically anyone else that provides a service like that -- soldiers, police, EMS crews and so on) have to put themselves through. Sure, some firefighters will go twenty-five years without getting a serious injury. Some police officers will work their entire career without having to pull a gun on someone. But those are the exception to the rule. Ambulance crews get guns pointed at them when they go to a medical call because the person there is paranoid that they're cops. Cops, hell, they get shot at and killed, anywhere from fifty to a hundred nationwide, and occasionally worse in certain areas like Los Angeles.

And that's to say nothing of the constant stress that damn near everyone in these fields or related fields are in (disaster management, dispatchers, 911 calltakers, etc). If anything they don't get enough to compensate for the fact that they're guesstimated to die about ten years earlier than someone who doesn't have a job with that kind of stress.

[Teebs]

Its weird how at no point he actually mentions how much a fireman makes a year; which is a little helpful in determining if they are over paid.

I also like how he just assumes he could be a fireman, despite the fact that most cities turn away most applicants.

The other factor for deciding whether they're overpaid would be whether they can get enough suitable applicants. If no one wants to be a firefighter that suggests they're not paid enough, if you've got way more applicants than places you're very unlikely to be paying them too much. Obviously just the fact that there are more applicants than jobs is meaningless in that though since 90% of those applicants might be unemployable.

[[R_H]]

I don't quite get why he finds a low(er) retirement age problematic, after all, it is a (dangerous) physically demanding job with all the risks that come with physically demanding work (and then some, due to where the work is done). People like construction workers, for example, can retire earlier (not at 55 though) over here because of the toll their work takes on their bodies.

[General Zod]

Okay, so we know they get a 90% pension plan. How is this proof they're overpaid? I notice there weren't any actual salary figures in the op's article to compare them with similarly high risk positions. And why is this guy complaining about firefighters being grossly overpaid and not, say, a major league sports player?

[Cecelia5578]

It seems like one solution would be to hire more firefighters, since that way you would cut down on the massive amounts of overtime that seem to be the main driver of those large salaries-assuming its cheaper to hire more firefighters and pay them just a base salary than it is to pay a smaller number of firefighters overtime.

I don't see the union going for that, though.

[Rahvin]

This douche obviously doesn't understand labor laws. Firefighters are required to be not just "on call," but on the firehouse grounds ready to jump immediately when a call comes through for the entirety of their 2-3 day shift.

If they were hourly workers, they would be required to be paid for each and every one of those hours...and even just 2 days/week is 48 hours, a 6-day workweek for the rest of us. I think a salary commensurate with the hours they are forced to give up their private lives to maintain readiness even when not on a specific call is appropriate.

And that's not even counting the hazardous nature of the job.

[Guardsman Bass]

If they were hourly workers, they would be required to be paid for each and every one of those hours...and even just 2 days/week is 48 hours, a 6-day workweek for the rest of us. I think a salary commensurate with the hours they are forced to give up their private lives to maintain readiness even when not on a specific call is appropriate.

Exactly. The vintner tries to dampen that a bit by saying that they sleep for one-third of it, which doesn't change the fact that they can still be called up at literally any time during that period. I'm sure Mr. Vintner, who likely sets his own hours, has it real rough in comparison.

[jcow79]

Okay, so we know they get a 90% pension plan. How is this proof they're overpaid? I notice there weren't any actual salary figures in the op's article to compare them with similarly high risk positions. And why is this guy complaining about firefighters being grossly overpaid and not, say, a major league sports player?

This was his followup after he recieved the backlash from his initial comments. It contains a lot of "details" that weren't mentioned in his initial complaint. I cannot comment on the validity of his claims. This was also linked in the OP.

Response from Dario SattuiShare.. Yesterday at 11:31am
1. Although it may not have been clear, my criticism was directed to the American Canyon City Council for they are the ones that have agreed to the salary and benefits for the firefighters that we clearly cannot afford. My beef is not with firefighters or other safety personnel, I respect and deeply appreciate their hard work, the risks that they take for all our safety, and I honor them for doing so. My concern is strictly with budgets, not with the firefighters themselves, as I indicated in my letter.

2 I was speaking strictly about American Canyon firefighters and their recent salary negotiations. American Canyon firefighters are represented by the same union that helped create the recent bankruptcy of Vallejo, the first time in California history that a city has filed for bankruptcy, and high pay/benefits for safety was a key problem that forced that bankruptcy.

3. In Vallejo many of the firefighters were making more than 200K a year, one made $357,000 annually, and the average compensation was more than $ 164,000 including incentive pay and overtime. These facts are a matter of public record. Check them out for yourselves.

This was a situation that got completely out of hand until the city went belly up. I fear that the county of Napa is heading in the same direction and that is why I felt I had to speak out as a concerned citizen. Napa cannot fix the roads, has chronically underfunded schools, has in some instances let sewage water that is not sufficiently treated spill out causing environmental damage because the county is so underfunded in its infrastructure needs that it cannot afford to fix it. Yet we have firefighters whose jobs are, according to them, identical in 90% of their duties to paramedics. But these Napa County paramedics make only about
$50,000 a year with much lower benefits. The firefighters in Napa make about 140K on average and many make much more than that. The firefighters in American Canyon can retire at 55 with 35 years of service at 105 % of their maximum annual compensation for life. When are we going to achieve some kind of balance? Again these facts are a matter of public record.

4. I wrote as a citizen of Napa to my local paper about a local issue that I am concerned about, and it has nothing to do with my wineries. I care about what happens in my home town, and I care about the fact that we have schools that have overcrowded classrooms and homeless women giving birth under bridges downtown, and yet we have this local class of workers that are clearly overpaid and getting more all the time when we can't even fund decent social services in this town. Let’s remember too that we have other professions that work hard, are very important to society and risk their lives for much less money: soldiers, police in the inner cities, nurses working the night shift saving lives, teachers making a difference in troubled areas. And don’t forget about the many thousands of volunteer firefighters that often get nothing or very little compensation for their selfless hard work and risking their lives. All I ask is that we have balance and don’t have civic expenditures we can’t pay for.

We need to bring things back into balance. I am sorry if some of you disagree with that, but I wonder how much you really know about what is going on with the extravagant budgets in Napa County, because that is what this is about, not any place else. These are the facts. You decide if you agree with my opinions.

Dario Sattui

[Isolder74]

More or less this is a whiny, ironic that he makes wine, moron who just looks at statistics and whines about the 'cushy' job of the firefighters.

[emo moron mode]Oh boo hoo! They get 4 days a week off!!! Boo Hoo! I wish I could have 4 days a week off!!!!! WAHH!!!!! They get X dollars a week for only 3 days work! WAH!!!!!! that is more then I get in a week working every day!!!!! WAAAH![/emo moron mode]

I have a friend who lives up the street that is a Firefighter and let me tell you something. You can tell when he does alot of jobs when on duty as after those shifts you have to speak a little louder because he can't hear when you whisper for a day after making more then 2 -3 truck runs in a shift the day before. His ears ring alot from the noise the truck makes. This is with using ear plugs but usually he has this problem when it's his turn to drive the truck that shift because the Driver and cabin mate can not wear earplugs as they need to listen to the radio set while they drive for up to date info as they head to someplace.

So why do firefighters retire early? Because they're all worn out, that's why, They need hearing aids sooner then most people....shall I go on?

[Samuel]

3. In Vallejo many of the firefighters were making more than 200K a year, one made $357,000 annually, and the average compensation was more than $ 164,000 including incentive pay and overtime.

Sounds like the same problem we have with the prison guard unions.

[General Zod]

Now that he's added some actual numbers. . . $150k+ does seem pretty exorbitant. What does the average SWAT member get paid in California? EDIT: (40-70k, apparently). It's not anywhere close to that, and I'll wager they put their lives in much greater danger.

[Rahvin]

What a jackass.

I'm going to continue looking at this as if firefighters were hourly, because it makes compensation with OT easier. Let's do some napkin math.

In California, work past 8 hrs in a day is paid at 1.5x your regular rate. Work past 12 hrs is paid at double time.

Assuming a 3-day shift, this means firefighters are working 8 regular hours, 4 overtime hours at 1.5 times their normal rate of pay, and 12 hours at double time for each of those three days (I'm assuming it starts over for each day, as opposed to continuing at double time past 12 hours for the remainder of the 72-hour shift).

If we give them a regular pay rate of $30/hr (not unreasonable, I would think, as their job is extremely hazardous; that breaks down to somewhere around $60k/year), then their pay breaks down to $1200/week in regular pay, $540/week in overtime, and $2160/week in double time. At 52 weeks per year, that would be $202,800 annually.

Obviously, firefighters aren't hourly employees, and I'm not sure what would be considered a justified "normal" rate of pay to start with. But considering the hours they put in, it's easy to see how much a relatively normal salary would be inflated by overtime.

[Rahvin]

Now that he's added some actual numbers. . . $150k+ does seem pretty exorbitant. What does the average SWAT member get paid in California? EDIT: (40-70k, apparently). It's not anywhere close to that, and I'll wager they put their lives in much greater danger.

SWAT teams don't work in 72-hour shifts, and that's a lot of overtime. If you took a SWAT member, made him work a 72-hour shift, and paid him as if he were hourly, you'd wind up in firefighter pay scales very easily.

[eion]

Now that he's added some actual numbers. . . $150k+ does seem pretty exorbitant. What does the average SWAT member get paid in California? EDIT: (40-70k, apparently). It's not anywhere close to that, and I'll wager they put their lives in much greater danger.

But are they required to be within 10 feet of their gear when on duty? Do they run into burning buildings? Do they work 2 days straight with no sleep?

Firefighters do a job few are able, or willing, to do. We need more firefighters, and good pay is one way to attract them. That and all the tail they get.

If he thinks firefighters are overpaid he can go form his own private firehouse and prove the private sector can do a better job than government. Some things aren't supposed to make money.

[General Zod]

But are they required to be within 10 feet of their gear when on duty? Do they run into burning buildings? Do they work 2 days straight with no sleep?

I can't say they deal with burning buildings, but they have to go into buildings with who knows what kind of psychopath pointing a weapon at them. I'd say that's just as hazardous as anything firefighters do.

Firefighters do a job few are able, or willing, to do. We need more firefighters, and good pay is one way to attract them. That and all the tail they get.

If he thinks firefighters are overpaid he can go form his own private firehouse and prove the private sector can do a better job than government. Some things aren't supposed to make money.

Or they could hire more firefighters and assign reasonable shifts. If you don't think the firefighters in the article's location are overpaid, look at the salary figures for NYC firefighters. The only person making more than $100k is the Batallion Chief.

[Rahvin]

Or they could hire more firefighters and assign reasonable shifts. If you don't think the firefighters in the article's location are overpaid, look at the salary figures for NYC firefighters. The only person making more than $100k is the Batallion Chief.

What are the overtime laws like in NY? Could the fact that CA overtime laws allow for double time pay after 12 hours (a significant factor in a 72-hour shift) be what's causing the difference?

The only problem I see with hiring more firefighters is the fact that then you have to add more people to health insurance plans (and other benefits). While salaries can scale with hours worked, health insurance is an additional flat rate per individual...and considering how high-risk firefighting is, I'd bet their health coverage isn't cheap.

[Alphawolf55]

Okay, so we know they get a 90% pension plan. How is this proof they're overpaid? I notice there weren't any actual salary figures in the op's article to compare them with similarly high risk positions. And why is this guy complaining about firefighters being grossly overpaid and not, say, a major league sports player?

Because sports players aren't paid by the city? There's little one can do about sports players being overpaid, there's a lot people can do about too much money being spent on fire and police departments.

[General Zod]

What are the overtime laws like in NY? Could the fact that CA overtime laws allow for double time pay after 12 hours (a significant factor in a 72-hour shift) be what's causing the difference?

You don't get overtime pay in a salaried position. I can pretty much guarantee it's a non-factor here.