The Saint John Firefighters’ Association is characterizing the mayor’s comments about the police and fire unions turning down an 8-percent wage increase as information ‘cherry picking.’
The comments were made to reporters after the city manager delivered the report on protective services at Tuesday’s Saint John council meeting.
President of the local firefighters’ union Peter Alexander tells CHSJ News while it is true they were offered 2-percent wage increases each year over four years about a year and a half ago, that’s not exactly the entire story.
“We were also offered the 24-hour shift that we’ve been looking for, but we were also offered a bunch of concessions that would greatly — and I will use the term gut — our collective agreement,” says Alexander.
“Our sick time for our employees, our sick bank, the way people are hired and changing that process…there was a lot of key things, our vacation, straight time for overtime. Some things that took decades, literally, a lifetime to achieve.”
The union says in a Facebook post that they would have turned down the offer regardless of the wage package.
“For them to cherry-pick information without telling the full story is not appropriate and I believe very unprofessional,” says Alexander.
Alexander says that they have been cut 30-percent since 1993 when they did 2500 calls and since that year their call load has gone up close to 300-percent.