Last month, Mayor Andre Dickens and union leaders celebrated the final passage by the City Council of the first comprehensive compensation study in nearly 15 years. The new pay plan bumped up the salaries of city employees and Atlanta’s first responders.
But not everyone is happy with the results. Fire union leaders say that their members were left with a minimal increase after changes to the study brought down the initial recommendation from a base pay of $75,000 annually to $68,000.
After a second draft of the study removed higher paying cities including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, the total city investment in firefighter salaries dropped from $8.6 million to $3.7 million.
Nate Bailey is the president of the Atlanta Professional Firefighters, a union that represents hundreds of the city’s firefighters and paramedics.
He testified at City Council last week that the final results of the pay study were “devastating” and that most lieutenants would only see a salary increase of about $58 per year while higher ranking chiefs saw a significant bump.
“If we don’t change that pay plan, we might not recover,” he told City Council members last Tuesday. “Because this is a two-year implementation and all the cities and counties around us, their top firefighter pay is over $70,000.”
Bailey said that the union is pushing for collective bargaining powers.
A spokesperson for the Dickens administration pushed back against the union’s position, saying that the changes to the study were to ensure that every employee received at least a 2% pay increase by Jan. 25. The mayor’s office said that the study also left out cities such as Augusta, Columbus and Albany that would have decreased salaries.
“There is always more work to be done, however Mayor Dickens and City Council have made significant investments in the men and women of AFRD, their facilities and the equipment they use to keep our communities safe,” a spokesperson for the mayor said.
City leaders point to dollars allocated for new equipment, vehicles, stations and the soon-to-open public safety training facility as large investments in the Atlanta’s firefighters.
“Mayor Dickens has been great to us — the pension changes are going to be outstanding, and Lord knows how much these fire trucks cost,” Bailey said. “But with the pension changes, we got to have a competitive salary, and that’s what we’re asking for.”
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