Overtime, Where is the Choice?

Budget Cuts Means More Overtime
Interview with Maurice Luque


“There is that potential that the limit to how much work time a firefighter can work. Once he or she has reached that limit they can't work it anymore.” - Maurice Luque

San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Maurice Luque said “there’s a pension program and that pension program pays eight percent on the money that is invested in that program for people. So if there is a chief here that has been with the department for 20 years he is part of the retirement program and he is putting money into that program and has been earning 8%. The city has to pay that interest on that money. This isn’t just for the fire department; it is for all city employs can invest in this pension program. Because of the economy and everything the Board is thinking about reducing the amount of interest that is paid on that money, the money that is invested for retirements. Like banks have reduced the amount they have on savings, they have reduced that amount down. If that amount drops, a lot of people retire early. Because then they can lock in the 8% plan and they wont get stuck with a lower % plan on their savings. So for the rest of there life they will get 8% on their retirement benefits. If they don’t retire and their interest rate goes down, they are only going to get 2. And many times that is not going to be economical for them to stay so they retire early.”

The San Diego Fire Department is government run; therefore the government pays for the expenses of the Fire Department. The city has been thinking about lowering the percent in the pension plan for all city employees, this could result in firefighters retiring early, and those still on the job to have to work overtime to fill the need of the city.

There have been cuts in the amount of people in the actual Fire Academy this year, and instead of having two Academies, only having one. I asked Maurice Luque: How will this affect the way that the department has shifts?

Maurice Luque: If we have a lot of retirements in the fire department, could loose about 100 people who retire early. To lock in that higher interest rate they are getting in on their pension. That will cause us to have our existing work force work more over time until we have an academy to get people trained and all the spots that are open from people that have retired. So we will probably have to hurry up and have an academy and in the mean time, using our existing firefighters the ones who are off duty now, have them work over time. Pay them overtime and keep doing that until we have enough new employs to bring into the workforce.”….. “see right now we do use some firefighters on overtime, you know to fill because it is cheaper to use those people as we need them, call them in as we need them rather then have more people then we can use. And it varies because people get sick, hurt, you know want extended leaves, family emergencies and so forth. It’s a fluctuating figure. And so the way we compensate for that is we call in the people who are off duty to come in and work, they sign up to work when they are off duty and so we just call them in off this list. If we need 10 we call in 10 if we need 5 we call in 5 if we don’t need any we don’t call in any. But we are always calling in somebody if they are on vacation or that type of thing. Well these firefighters are always working overtime and its cheeped to bring people in and have them work over time then it is to higher brand new employs. You know because we don’t have to pay insurance and we don’t have to pay benefits and all the overtime costs.”

Mariah Teemsma: are there any concerns because of this?

Maurice Luque: Yes there are and the concerns are, the younger the workforce the less experiences there are and that means that a higher degree of on the job training that you need, the higher degree of supervision you have because you don’t have as much experience. There are things out there that are changing, it’s a younger workforce, and if you have a workforce that has been in place for a long time you have very little people that aren’t experienced and they know what to expect, and they have been to fires, and they have been to rescues, kind of done it all so they work with a minimum of supervision and to have new employs, and new people coming in they need guidance, they need closer supervision. Because you don’t want to get them hurt, make sure they know what they are doing until they reach that level of experience. The workforce is changing right now. And that is the additional challenge of continuing to train them to get in the workforce the thing is in the mean time they have to go to real accidents and real rescues and real fires. And so we have to be very careful about people getting hurt and the right supervision. They are not veteran they haven’t been there and done that before. And so we have to watch over them so it does create a real emphasis on safety, we always have a real emphasize on safety, but even more so when you have a younger worker.

Mariah Teemsma: how do you feel that situations like this could better be handled?

Maurice Luque: Well I think that it’s a real tricky issue here you have a city that has finical problems and they can’t be thinking about getting people pay raises. There is a contention of the firefighters union that they are not paid competitive to what other cities are paying there firefighters and they have done some studies that have showed that other cities pay there firefighters more then the firefighters are getting here, a better contract or whatever. So there has been a little bit of a tough economic time a lot of firefighters were leaving San Diego to go to other cities that paid more money, the police had the same problem two things slowed that down. The first one is the police got a better contract so now there pay was more competitive. Less people leaving the police department, then the economic situation where other city departments are not hiring new people. They’ve seen budget cuts and challenges like we are and they are not likely to continue the same type of pay increase that has happened here. And they are going to kind of hold the line. And the way that slows down people’s decision to move on when there is an unsure economic time. They are not going to leave San Diego for LA when they here that LA cut back on there Fire Department. And they be closing stations and are laying off admin people there so it kind of keeps people in place but you question is how could we avoid the kind of transit of the workforce that leaves. I think that the key is to paying competitively being competitive in your salary pay firefighters, pay police what other departments pay and now you have equity and now there is not a tendency to leave the department to go somewhere else. So that I think is another way, when your benefits are equal.