Council: Digging a Firebreak

In its first major action, last Thursday (Feb. 5) the new City Council passed a resolution that – if it succeeds – could mark the turning point in the long-troubled labor/management relations at the Austin Fire Department.

Council unanimously approved a resolution sponsored by District 4 Council Member Greg Casar (initially co-sponsored by D1’s Ora Houston, D2’s Delia Garza, D3’s Pio Renteria, and D6’s Don Zimmerman) that threaded the needle between withdrawing the pending Request for Proposals from vendors for a hiring process for new cadets – a move that reportedly would have drawn the wrath of the U.S. Department of Justice – and still enabling another round of negotiations between city management and the Austin Firefighters Association. Following a communication from the DOJ that an outright withdrawal of the RFP (initially contemplated in the draft resolution) would result in a federal lawsuit against the city for violating the consent decree previously imposed by Justice, Casar amended his resolution to leave the RFP in place while negotiations proceed – with no vendor to be hired until negotiations have concluded.

The passage was directly enabled by last-minute conversations between AFD Chief Rhoda Mae Kerr and AFA President Bob Nicks, who jointly presented to Council a brief agreement on a procedure to follow in negotiations over a hiring process while the city seeks a vendor that would comply with that process – under the guiding terms of the consent decree, intended to enforce racial diversification of the AFD. The agreement was incorporated into the resolution by amendment, and Nicks said he believes negotiations can succeed quickly enough to maintain the consent decree timeline and begin hiring applicants in the fall. Should collective bargaining fail – of which Council will be the arbiter – the AFA will be consulted on the vendor contract.

Although the resolution passed unanimously, it was not universally embraced. Blair Campbell, President of the Austin African American Firefighters Association, told the Austin Monitor prior to the Council meeting that he strongly opposed withdrawing the RFP and returning to negotiations. And Steve Brown, who identified himself as a rejected AFD applicant who had filed a discrimination complaint against the AFD with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, opposed the resolution before Council as a return to “business as usual.” Casar responded that he takes very seriously the obligations of the city to racial justice in the hiring process, and would not allow that goal to be undermined in collective bargaining. He summarized his motivation: “My intention with this resolution is to create the conditions for a successful bargaining process that will result in more racial diversity, great new firefighters, and the positive labor-management relations that we need to move forward.”