chicagoareafire.com

The Chicago Sun-Times has an article (one of many to come in the coming weeks) discussing the nuances of the CFD union contract which is expiring at the end of June. This article goes into increases in the base salary of many firefighters and chief officers. Excerpts include:

The city of Chicago is paying fire department employees more than $80 million a year for perks that boosted their salaries by an average of more than $15,000 apiece last year, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis finds.

The salary-boosting extras aren’t reflected in the online database of city workers’ pay that Mayor Rahm Emanuel created in what he described as an effort to provide greater transparency for taxpayers about how City Hall operates.

According to the Emanuel administration’s “data portal,” fire department employees made an average of about $87,000 last year. But when you take into account the extras, that boosted the average salary for the department to about $104,000 a year, according to a Sun-Times analysis of city budget data.

Most of the 5,000 members of the department are paid far more than their posted salaries thanks to a long list of provisions negotiated by their union.

That wide, hidden gap between firefighters’ reported salaries and their actual take-home pay is heightening tensions as the firefighters’ union tries to negotiate a new contract with City Hall.

The Sun-Times reported earlier this month that, with the current five-year contract set to expire at the end of June, the Emanuel administration is targeting the perks. Union leaders vowed to fight to hold onto the gains they won under former Mayor Richard M. Daley.

The Chicago Fire Department’s personnel costs totaled nearly $511 million last year, up from $480.2 million in 2010, according to the analysis of all payments the city made to department employees. About $430 million of the 2011 tab was for the regular salaries the Emanuel administration posts online. The rest went toward extras including double-time pay for holidays including Flag Day and “specialty pay” to those who have undergone additional training.

One of the biggest and fastest-growing categories of the additional pay was the 5 percent bonus given to firefighters who are certified divers. The same bonus goes to “Tech A” workers, who have been trained in handling hazardous materials.

Those pay-boosters weren’t part of the previous firefighters’ contract, which expired in 2007. After they were added, firefighters rushed to get them.

By the beginning of this year, nearly 4,000 employees — 80 percent of the department’s personnel — had undergone hazardous-materials training and were getting the 5 percent pay boost — twice as many as had the training in 2008.

The number of certified divers in the department also mushroomed under the current contract — to 367, up from 142 five years ago.

As a result, the cost for speciality pay rocketed from $6.4 million in 2008 to more than $18.3 million last year, city documents show.

Many high-ranking fire department employees also have boosted their salaries. For instance, Dan Fabrizio, a battalion chief who also is political director of the firefighters’ union, made $129,349 in regular pay. But Fabrizio’s actual wages came to more than $154,000, ranking him among the 100 best-paid Chicago fire officials last year.

The only extra that was more costly than specialty pay was “holiday premium” pay: Any fire department employee who works on any of 13 holidays — including Flag Day, June 14 — gets double their regular rate. Holiday premium pay cost the city more than $19.2 million in 2011.

An additional $15 million was paid to fire employees last year for “duty availability” pay — which everybody gets just for being in the department. This benefit sends every firefighter an extra $805 check every three months.

The Emanuel administration is proposing to do away with duty availability pay and to limit specialty pay to “those working in that capacity on a given shift,” according to a letter that Chicago Firefighters Local 2 President Tom Ryan sent his members on May 25. Ryan promised to “continue to vigorously fight these insulting, ridiculous proposals.”

The entire article can be found HERE.

Also part of the article is a list of the top 100 fire department salaries.