San Diego Firefighters Receive 3.5% Pay Increase

New labor deals announced Friday include pay raises of 3.2 percent for San Diego's 1,900 police officers and 3.5 percent for the city's 900 firefighters.

The raises are smaller than those given last month to the city's 150 deputy city attorneys, 4,000 white-collar workers and 1,800 blue-collar workers.

Deputy city attorneys got 12 percent raises over the next two years, blue-collar workers got 8 percent raises over two years and white-collar workers got 9 percent over two years.

Those deals also included much larger pay spikes for workers in targeted jobs where the city pays less than other government agencies. For example, 640 city engineers got 29 percent increases.

The deals announced Friday would increase police officer pay by 3.2 percent on July 1 and firefighter pay by 3.5 percent over two years — 2.5 percent on July 1 and 1 percent on July 1, 2022.

The police deal would cover just the next fiscal year, while the firefighter deal would cover two years.

The deal with the firefighter union, San Diego City Firefighters Local 145, also includes an additional 5 percent pay hike on Jan. 1 for battalion chiefs, air operations chiefs and assistant fire marshals.

The tentative agreements, which were negotiated by Mayor Todd Gloria and still need final approval from the City Council, leave only the city's 100 full-time lifeguards without a new labor contract for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

The council is scheduled to approve the new labor agreements at its meeting Tuesday, which is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. The council approved deals with the other three unions on June 8.

The mayor offered smaller increases to police and firefighters because their salaries aren't significantly lower than their counterparts in other cities.

For example, police officers, who got a package of raises in 2017 totaling more than 30 percent, have moved closer to the median salary for law enforcement in the region.

"Our police officers and firefighters — like all our city employees — work incredibly hard every day to serve and protect San Diegans, and they should be compensated fairly and in a way that demonstrates our appreciation for what they do," Gloria said in a news release. "These agreements will help us attract and retain top-flight personnel, enhance public safety and support working families."

The collective pay raises negotiated by the mayor this spring and summer are expected to cost the city roughly $100 million per year when they fully kick in.

The goal is boosting the quality of the city's workforce by making pay more competitive.

Multiple studies by the city over the last five years have shown pay gaps as large as 50 percent for many jobs, which labor leaders have blamed partly on a five-year pay freeze included in a 2012 city ballot measure that also eliminated pensions for city employees other than police officers.

That measure, Proposition B, has been overturned by the courts. As a result, city officials have been preparing to award retroactive pension to thousands of city workers hired after July 2012.

Gloria said in a news release Friday that the increased compensation will help address a 12.9 percent vacancy rate across city departments, which he blamed for delays in residents receiving services.

The three labor deals approved June 8 included multiple pay raises for affected city workers.

Deputy city attorneys got 12 percent raises over the next two years — 4 percent raises on July 1 and in July 2022, coupled with 2 percent raises in both January 2022 and January 2023.

Blue-collar workers got 8 percent raises over the two years, 4 percent on July 1 and 4 percent in July 2022. Those workers are represented by Local 127 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

White-collar workers, who are represented by the Municipal Employees Association, got 9 percent raises over the two years — 4 percent on July 1 and 5 percent in July 2022.

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