Atlanta Firefighters Protest Police-Only Raise Proposal - Firehouse.com News
Read this article, in its entirety, and let me know if it sounds familiar.
Atlanta Firefighters Protest Police-Only Raise Proposal - Firehouse.com News:
Atlanta's firefighters are protesting Mayor Shirley Franklin's decision to give police a raise but not them.
Franklin hopes to reduce attrition in the Atlanta Police Department by boosting pay by 3.5 percent, beginning in July. The mayor wants to give police officers $3.8 million in surplus funds while offering no raises to other city employees, including firefighters.
So far this year, Atlanta has hired 68 officers and has lost 64, leaving the 1,641-member Police Department with 145 vacancies.
Firefighters, as they have done in prior years when Franklin did not treat them equally, descended on City Hall on Monday to demand equal pay.
Capt. Joe Hussey was among about two dozen firefighters who attended the council meeting seeking "parity" with police. He promised that he and his colleagues would take their protest to the streets.
"No matter what we do," Hussey said, "we can't get anything. The T-shirt says it all." Like the others, he wore a red T-shirt printed for the occasion with the words. "Atlanta values firefighters 0%."(Read More)
It seems to me as though the Firefighters are being penalized for staying on the job. This can have detrimental effects on the morale, as even the article points out. It is amazing though that out of probably at least 500+ firefighters, only two dozen firefighters were at there council meeting.
2 comments:
You are right. We have nearly 1000 on the job. We had to fight for several years to get back up to nearly full staff. We still aren't there yet. We have had to march on City Hall so many times that a lot of guys are just so tired of doing it. We are the kick-dog for the Mayor's office. We will most likely have our annual big march from Turner Field to City hall sometime in the next month or so. We usually have about 100 or more. We had hoped that our big push this year would be for collective bargaining, but the queen had slapped us in another direction again. Our biggest power right now is public support. You can help by e-mailing Mayor Franklin at sfranklin@atlantaga.gov. Please cc City Council Members (who now have the power to correct the problem) at *citycouncilmembers@atlantaga.gov We've got to stand together! Thank you and be safe out there...
Keith Schumacher
Captain
IAFF Local #134
Thanks for the information. I will email the Mayor immediately. We went through this same exact thing last year when the police got raises to entice more officers to stay. The Sherrifs deputies and the Firefighters had to fight to get a 4% raise that the police had gotten. We ended up getting it a year later.
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