AUSTIN, Texas — Austin Fire is facing a hiring deadline as the department works to fill nearly 100 positions in time to reduce workweeks under a new labor agreement.
The workweek reduction is part of the labor contract the city signed with the Austin Firefighters Association in December 2025. The contract creates a new schedule and shortens the average workweek by three hours.
Austin Fire Division Chief Mark Bridges said the new schedule beginning next October will cut the average workweek from 53 hours to 49.8 hours. Bridges described it as “the Austin schedule,” saying, “Where are members work 24 hours on, 72 hours off. They come back for 48 hours on and then have 72 hours off.”
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Right now, Austin firefighters work 24 hours on, 48 hours off, and repeat. Bridges said the new schedule is critical to firefighters’ recovery and work-life balance.
“They’ve got that initial rest work period, and then they’ve got the normal time off. They’ve gotten another 48 hours after that to be able to balance their work life and to do family things and to do the things that many times are missing now,” he said.
The city is funding the cost of hiring 54 new firefighter positions to make the reduced workweek possible, but Bridges said the department still has around 40 more vacancies to fill on top of that, a problem that he said many other departments around the country are facing.
“15 to 20 years ago, if we had 50 open positions, we would have four to 5,000 people applying. And now it’s those numbers are dropping 1500 to a thousand people showing up for the same amount of positions. It’s a trend that we’re working to understand why that’s happening,” he said.
As the department works to bring in more firefighters, Austin Public Safety Commission members raised questions about how the transition to the new schedule will work without affecting coverage.
Commissioner Denise Eger asked, “Can you help us understand the jump from September to October—so we don’t have gaps in coverage?”
The contract also protects four-person staffing on fire engines, which the city considered lowering to three last year to cut overtime costs. If the department does not fill the vacancies by next October, Bridges said the department would have to rely more on overtime to meet minimum staffing requirements.
“We are contractually required to have our minimum staffing. And so if we don’t have the people, the other option is to pay overtime,” Bridges said. “I am confident we’re going to be able to fill our vacancies by October because we have to.”
Bridges said the new schedule is coming regardless of whether the department reaches its hiring goal, and that it begins Oct. 3, 2027.