Arbitrator awards 10.5 per cent pay hike to Vancouver firefighters
Increase creates budget challenge, new administration says
An arbitrator has awarded Vancouver’s 770 unionized firefighters a 10.5 per cent pay raise over four years, ending a long- standing dispute with the city over wages.
The increase brings them roughly into parity with other major fire departments in B. C.
The award was reached Tuesday and is retroactive to 2012. When coupled with a recent arbitration award for Vancouver police, it will mean the city has to find an additional $ 17 million this year to cover retroactive wages, City Manager Penny Ballem confirmed Thursday.
The firefighters’ award amounts to 2.5 per cent per year, with an additional half per cent in 2015 to help them catch up with a previous contract to Surrey firefighters that made them the highest- paid in the province.
Both the fire and police department contracts end in 2015, at the same time all other city contracts expire, presenting newly re- elected Mayor Gregor Robertson’s administration with a new budgetary challenge. In 2012, the city and the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 15 ratified a four- year, 6.75 per cent deal ending in 2015.
“We have a deal ( for firefighters), the large part of which was negotiated but which was touched up by the arbitrator. We’re happy to have that over,” Ballem said. “Public safety wage ( costs are) huge this year. It is a big elephant flowing through, about $ 17 million more in wages for fire and police.”
Of that, about $ 11 million will be to pay firefighters for the three years they have been without a contract. Ballem did not say how the city will cover the additional costs this year.
In its recruitment literature, the city says that as of 2012 the average firefighter’s salary ranged from $ 56,520 to $ 82,369 plus benefits.
Rob Weeks, president of Local 18 of the International Association of Firefighters, said the union had originally asked for a five- year contract at four per cent per year, but were satisfied with arbitrator Bruce Wilkins’ decision.
“We’re not ahead and we’re not really behind. We are the biggest and busiest department in B. C.,” he said. “But we are still significantly behind other major departments in Canada.”
Weeks said firefighters have been patient in their negotiations, but noted that the fire department’s share of the city’s operating budget has declined from nine per cent to seven per cent in recent years. As a result, firefighters were having to do more with less, and were falling behind other firefighters in comparable major cities.
The city had tried to keep police and firefighter contracts on par with the most recent CUPE contracts. It noted in its 2014 operating budget that it had not factored in wage adjustments for either police or the fire department since their contracts had expired, but that if they were kept to the CUPE rates they would be 3.2 per cent for police and 4.7 per cent for firefighters.
However, those rates were considered to be inadequate by the arbitrators. Earlier this year, arbitrator Stan Lanyon gave police — who had been without a contract since 2013 — a threeyear, seven per cent contract.