PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE | BRIAN K. RICE
A TIME FOR VIGILANCE
In two-plus decades representing my fellow firefighters as a union leader, I’ve spoken at more than my share of city council meetings, but never like the one I attended in the city of Placentia earlier this year.
Going against a room full of angry residents, the Placentia City Council voted its citizens out of fully professional fire and EMS response from Orange County Fire Authority. Instead, they decided to set up their own fire department on the cheap, with staff reductions, support from hourly reserves and a no-bid, local ALS provider with an agenda to privatize all ALS in Orange County.
For the citizens of Placentia, and the communities surrounding them, the risks associated with this model of coverage are enormous … life threatening, in fact. But for our proud, hardworking firefighters, the Placentia agenda has another destructive, and profoundly unjust, consequence: It would deny firefighters … and only firefighters … the protection of a dignified retirement with a secure pension.
You read it right: Firefighters would be the only class of employees who would not have a pension. That’s just wrong.
We believe ending secure pensions for firefighters and completely privatizing emergency medical response is the unstated, but unmistakable agenda of the city’s action. All you need to do is look at the reaction from anti-firefighter, anti-pension advocates: They’re pitching the Placentia model all over the state. And the so-called “substitute” – an insecure defined contribution system – will be run by, of all people, the International City Managers Association. The very people at the heart of destroying secure pensions will profit from their replacement with an insecure 401k.
It grieves me to report that a couple of former IAFF members – now retired fire chiefs – are helping Placentia downsize and take away pensions. They’re complicit in this pension grab even though each of them enjoys the security of pensions from multiple fire agencies.
If this were just about one community in Orange County, that would be bad enough. But the Placentia playbook is only the beginning of a dark and dangerous road for firefighters and for our profession.
For our members, this attack is the latest in a series of gambits aimed at destroying retirement security. Every group of employees that is removed from CalPERS weakens the system, as there are fewer employees paying in to support it
Upending secure pensions also weakens departments like Placentia. Any firefighting job that doesn’t offer a secure pension is, by definition, an inferior opportunity, creating problems for recruitment and retention.
Most troubling is how the Placentia scam plays into a larger effort to demean, discredit and weaken the fire service as a whole, and the job you do every day.
As California’s fire risk has exploded, we’ve seen an increased push by out-of-state interests to impose staffing models and work ethics that would roll back all we’ve built for workplace safety, training, protection and professionalism.
This past year at the Kincade Fire in Sonoma County, our firefighters reported an unprecedented number of crews run by private, for-profit fire companies that operate outside of California. These crews were actually dispatched from out-of-state state governments when ordered through mutual aid. It turns out that when CalOES makes mutual aid requests from other state governments in the Western US, their corresponding agencies are sending these privateers instead of local agency firefighters.
Often, these privateers are underpaid and under-trained, by California standards, making them a direct safety risk to the better trained personnel they are working alongside. But this approach is also putting the individuals that work for these companies at risk as well. One of those imported private firefighters was injured during the Kincade Fire.
It’s no mystery why out-of-state private companies are trying to muscle into California. The fire and disaster risk we face in California presents a profit opportunity, especially if they can cut corners on California’s strict training standards, workers’ compensation protection and fair pay and benefits. Remember those two ex-chiefs I mentioned in Placentia? Both have extensive pedigrees outside of the state. They are trying to bring those corner-cutting values into our communities. And guess what? They’ve actually set up their own business to spread their “model” elsewhere.
The reality is that the fire risk in California is unique, and uniquely dangerous. Wildland fires in Montana or Utah or Oregon largely take place on forest lands, or in remote areas of the state. In California, wildland fires not only burn hotter and more savagely, they are more likely to occur in the wildland urban interface, where structure protection and life saving are the highest priority.
We can’t let California become just another cash cow for private opportunists. Our fire service has built a model mutual aid response system and our firefighters have the training, background and experience to ensure that our citizens are protected.
I am pleased to say that our perspective is held not just by labor but by management as well. When CPF put out a call to its members to stay away from applying to Placentia, the California Fire Chiefs Association made a similar call to its members.
This past year, CPF took on the for-profit operators seeking to commandeer the 9-1-1 dispatch system. We won that fight. I promise you that we will continue to meet this threat head on, with, I expect the continued support of management. Only this way can we ensure that California continues to have a fire service that is the envy of the world.