Firefighters awarded 7.5% wage hike

A recent arbitration has awarded Niagara Falls firefighters a 7.57 per cent wage increase over three years.

It also includes benefit enhancements and a new 24-hour shift schedule on a trial basis, starting in 2019.

The issue was discussed during an in-camera session prior to Tuesday evening’s council meeting, and was ratified during the open portion of the meeting.

Fire Chief Jim Boutilier referred all labour-related questions to Trent Dark, the city’s director of human resources.

Dark said the 7.57 per cent over three years, or 2.5 per cent per year, is retroactive.

“We’ve been traditionally at parity or a little below police in terms of the salaries,” he said.

“The 7.57 per cent puts them a little above the police — it puts them about three quarters of a per cent above, so it translates into about $733 per annum, somewhere in that neighbourhood.”

Todd Harrison, the city’s director of finance, said the retro pay would be about $2.3 million for 2015, 2016 and 2017.

“That includes the payment adjustments for the hourly rates because the guys were paid at the historical rate, which would have been the 2014 number, so we’d have to catch up for all those years,” he said.

“Then it also is adjustment for OMERS (Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System) because on the corporation side we have to pay the OMERS portion of that as well.”

Harrison said the city set that money aside in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

City council approved its 2018 operating budget during Tuesday’s meeting, which will see the average Niagara Falls household pay $50, or 1.5 per cent, more this year in taxes.

The largest increase is in salaries and benefits due to contractual obligations, increases for fire arbitration, transit operating hours and additional staff in parks and building/bylaw, said Harrison.

Salaries and wages make up $47.3 million of the $135-million budget, up from $44.5 million in 2017.

That’s a $2.7 million, or 6.2 per cent, increase.

Labour costs in fire services in the 2018 operating budget are about $15 million.

That’s up about $1.5 million from 2017.

Of the 62 employees with the City of Niagara Falls on the most recent Sunshine List of public sector employees who earned more than $100,000 last year — which was released last week — 45 were in the city’s fire department.

Harrison said that’s a common trend across Ontario municipalities.

“Because the wage settlement is a little bit higher than we expected, we’ve had to adjust the rates in 2018 to compensate for that,” he said.

“For ’18, the only impact is the adjustment to the rates, bringing the rates up to normalized numbers.”