A labor arbitration panel has reached a draft contract with the union that represents 2,000 firefighters statewide, although details are not expected to be made public until the end of the month.
Bobby Lee, president of the Hawaii Fire Fighters Association, said the union was informed of the draft award Friday. He declined to provide details such as the length of the contract, pending a 15-day review period by the parties, but said he was pleased with the plan.
"It’s a good award," Lee said. "I think it’s fair for employers and fair for employees."
Union officials are meeting with members across the state to explain the terms. "A few of the provisions that we have do require some discussion," Lee said.
The union, which represents firefighters in all four counties and 200 crash firefighters at state airports, has been without a contract since July 2011 and is the last of the state’s government labor unions to reach an agreement. Its 2007 contract was a four-year agreement that awarded firefighters a raise of about 5 percent annually.
WHILE appearing before the city Ethics Commission on an unrelated matter Monday, Honolulu Managing Director Ember Shinn referenced the firefighters’ arbitration award in explaining the need for fiscal restraint. Shinn told commission members that the city is facing a projected $156 million shortfall in its 2015 operating budget.
City spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke said Mayor Kirk Caldwell, Shinn and other officials are precluded from discussing the terms of the contract until it becomes official.
An arbitrated four-year contract awarded to police officers in the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers in July includes wage increases amounting to about 16.8 percent over four years, or about $121.5 million for the city. But officials from the counties were caught off guard by a "standard-of-conduct differential" increase that added, for Honolulu, an additional $43.4 million over four years.
For more than a decade, officers have been receiving $1 for every hour that they work as compensation for being required by HPD policy to adhere to its standard of conduct 24 hours a day. That differential goes up to $2 an hour for most officers this fiscal year under the new contract, then climbs each year to a high of $3.80 an hour by July 1, 2016.
The firefighters do not receive a standard-of-conduct differential, and the compensation is not expected to be included in the union’s contract.
