Fire union arbitration set to end in January
Testimony over as panel decides terms of contract
The yearslong battle over San Antonio firefighters’ pay and benefits could finally end in January.
Representatives for the city and the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association last week wrapped up testimony before a panel of arbitrators who will decide terms of the union’s new contract.
The three-member panel is expected to issue its decision next month, ending a five-year stalemate between the city and the union. The ruling will be binding on both sides.
The firefighters’ previous contract expired in 2014, but many of its terms remain in place under a so-called evergreen clause.
After negotiations failed to produce a breakthrough, the union opted in July to send the dispute to arbitration, exercising a right it won at the ballot box in November 2018. In that election, San Antonio voters approved a unionsponsored city charter amendment that gave the union unilateral power to take contract impasses to arbitration.
As a result, the city no longer completely controls one of its largest expenses. At $323.8 million, the Fire Department accounts for a quarter of the city’s $1.3 billion operating budget.
City officials say San Antonio is the first major Texas city to have a collective bargaining agreement determined through arbitration. Officials have warned that an unfavorable result could imperil the city’s finances and its standing with the three major credit rating agencies.
For two weeks, the arbitration panel heard expert testimony and reviewed exhibits from both sides in a packed conference room in the Catholic Life Insurance building on the Northeast Side.
If the city gets its way, firefighters would receive a one-time bonus March 1, followed by 3 percent wage increases on Oct. 1 and in October 2021.
The union wants an immediate 14 percent boost in wages for one year along with a $7,250 “signing bonus,” intended to make up for five years of frozen wages.
But the union has given some ground when it comes to firefighters’ health care — the most contentious point in the labor dispute.
Right now, taxpayers pay the full health insurance premiums for firefighters and their families. Firefighters pay nothing and enjoy low deductibles.
San Antonio officials want to set up two options, both of which would require firefighters to start paying a share of premiums. A “consumer-driven” plan would have low premiums but higher deductibles. Under a “value plan,” firefighters would pay higher premiums. The police union agreed to a similar set-up in 2016.
The fire union had sought control over its own health care in the form of a union-controlled trust — essentially a separate health care fund for firefighters. The union at one point asked the city for $50 million to set up such a trust. But San Antonio officials said it would be too expensive and would provide fewer benefits for firefighters and their families.
The union is no longer actively seeking the trust, though it still wants a committee formed to explore whether one would work. But union officials now agree that firefighters should at least help pay insurance premiums.
The city’s proposed contract would run for three years while the fire union’s would expire in October. During the hearings, arbitrator John Specia, a former Bexar County judge, asked the city and the union to consider longer contract terms — in part to allow time to repair their relationship after years of bad blood.
Each side selected one arbitrator to serve on the panel. Those two selected a neutral third.
The city picked San Antonio attorney Phil Pfeiffer — former head of the Norton Rose Fulbright law firm’s San Antonio office who has represented management in arbitration proceedings. The union tapped Mike Tedesco — a labor lawyer based in Portland, Ore., who frequently represents public safety unions.
Pfeiffer and Tedesco chose Specia as the panel’s third member. Specia, who led the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, is a partner in the law firm Plunkett, Griesenbeck and Mimari where he specializes in mediation, arbitration and private judging.