By Corene Brisendine
Manhattan Mercury – December 4, 2013
Submitted by Newz Group Clipping Service – December 10, 2013
Here was a smoldering blaze that Manhattan firefighters simply couldn’t put out.
One after another, city commissioners explained Tuesday night that a cost of living increase must apply across the board–and that firefighters would have to be treated the same as the rest of the city’s 335 employees.
In the end, firefighters in the audience left disappointed as commissioners voted 5-0 to implement a COLA for all city employees by 1.7 percent for 2014.
Local firefighters’ union president Tim Davenport asked commissioners to give firefighters a 2.3 percent increase, but the argument was rejected on the basis of maintaining equality.
Commissioner Wynn Butler said the increase the union was seeking was not for cost of living, but a general wage increase. Butler said that was not fair to the other city employees.
“COLA should not be a vehicle to kick up everybody’s wages,” Butler said. “(A wage increase) is something else, to be argued at a different time.”
The rest of the commissioners agreed.
They told city manager Ron Fehr to start looking at the wage scale of all employees, including the fire department, to determine if the base salaries need to be increased.
Mayor John Matta said he definitely wanted lower-paid workers to get higher wages because, simply looking at the firefighters pay scale, the bottom-end wage seemed below average.
Matta pointed out that the upper end of the pay scale was significantly higher than average for comparable cities, and some sort of equity needed to be worked out.
Fehr said that the wage changes for firefighters and city employees would not be addressed until 2015, because Tuesday night’s decision was for the wages paid to firefighters and other city employees for 2014.
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