Out Of Control Firefighters

Regarding "Firefighters deal includes raise" (Tuesday Front Page), coming on the heels of the revelation that Houston Fire Department retirees were walking away with six figure payouts for unused days off, I guess we should have seen this overtime "compromise" coming.  Rather than rein in the overtime perks in the HFD contract that threatened to bust the budget and cut services, Mayor Parker decided to throw more money at it.  In return for their promise not to further exploit the OT privileges in the current contract, she gave all firefighters a two percent raise and a cash payment of $975 that was euphemistically referred to as a "uniform allowance". 

 

Only a public sector union negotiation could propose to fix a projected $8.5 million overtime cost over-run with payouts that will cost the City $9.3 Million in the next year, and an extra $5.5 million for every full year after that. The only thing funnier than the payoff is the tortured language used by both sides to portray this concession as some kind of "good faith" compromise, and the only thing funnier than that is the creation of yet another in the seemingly endless categories of public employee pay, where a nuisance payoff is called a uniform allowance. 

 

On the HFD website under their mission statement, the fire department lists the following goals*:

 

Be Nice (Improve Customer Service)
• Strengthen and reinforce a positive public perception of the department
• Embrace Diversity
• Fairness

 

Exploiting crazy OT policies to inflate your pay is not nice, does nothing to reinforce a positive perception of the department, and is the exact opposite of fair.

 

But that's just another day in the public sector.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress, TX

 

* http://www.houstontx.gov/fire/abouthfd/index