San Francisco firefighters have secured a deal with City Hall for a 14% pay increase over four years.
Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle
The San Francisco firefighters union has secured a deal with City Hall to grant its members a 14% pay increase over four years, mirroring a similar agreement recently secured by city police officers.
Leaders of San Francisco Firefighters Local 798 signed off Tuesday on the tentative contract, which will now head to rank-and-file members for a vote in the coming weeks. After that, the Board of Supervisors will take up the agreement.
By reaching the contract deal with firefighters, Mayor Daniel Lurie has answered two of the biggest labor-related questions facing his administration this year, following the four-year tentative agreement approved by the board of the San Francisco Police Officers Association last week. The police contract also provides for 14% raises over four years.
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But the large pay increases the city is granting to both police and firefighter unions may further strain San Francisco’s finances amid massive recurring budget deficits caused by the city’s slow economic recovery from the pandemic and reduced federal funding from the Trump administration. Lurie and city supervisors this summer must close a projected $877 million two-year shortfall.
The city will pay the bulk of the firefighter raises in the back end of the contract, according to the union. Firefighters’ base pay currently ranges from about $90,000 at entry level to about $152,000 for those with seven years of service.
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In addition to the 14% pay bump, the union said firefighters with at least 10 years of service to the city will get a 3% bonus to acknowledge their higher training and education levels, the union said. That’s similar to a 3% retention bonus the Lurie administration agreed to pay police officers who have been with the city for at least five years.
Sam Gebler, president of Local 798, said in a statement that the firefighters’ tentative deal is “fair and strikes the right balance.”
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“It supports our firefighters and paramedics on the frontlines while recognizing the city’s financial responsibilities,” Gebler said.
Lurie said in a statement that the contract would give firefighters ”the resources they need to continue protecting San Franciscans every day.”
“Our firefighters put themselves in harm’s way to keep our neighborhoods and families safe,” Lurie said. “This agreement recognizes that work and makes sure we continue to support them in a way that is responsible and sustainable for the city.”
Lurie’s agreements with the police and firefighter unions follows the release of a recent report that questioned how City Hall would be able to balance paying the unions while funding other core government services and closing the deficit. In its report last week, the think tank SPUR noted that spending on police and fire contracts already made up a major portion of the city’s discretionary budget. The raises could set a precedent for when unions representing the city’s remaining 31,000 employees negotiate their contracts next year.
“Agreements with all city employees will determine not just what the city pays staff, but also what services it can afford to provide, how it can respond to changing community needs, and how much fiscal burden it passes on to future generations of residents,” SPUR said in the report.
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Leaders of both the police and firefighter unions have pushed back on the SPUR report. Gebler, of the firefighter union, told SPUR’s CEO that the findings contained “significant fallacies and methodological biases” and said the report used “poor comparisons and faulty statistics that misrepresent the reality of public safety operations.”
Lurie’s office has declined to comment on the SPUR report.
The mayor is also facing other tough battles with labor leaders this year, including a November ballot measure he’s proposing that would make it harder to bring future measures to voters. Lurie’s office also recently told city departments to plan for 500 job cuts