In late June, during the lead-up to his union’s labor negotiations with the city, Austin Firefighters Association President Bob Nicks told the Chronicle that he anticipated a relatively quiet collective bargaining session. He carried a similar tone into the two parties’ introductory meeting later that month, saying the AFA wasn’t looking for major changes to its agreement. But that rhetoric jumped out the window, at least briefly, during the AFA’s second session with the city on July 6.
There, in a particularly tense moment, Nicks responded to the city’s proposed revision of the contract’s hiring article by accusing the city of “bad faith bargaining” for the way city negotiators relayed those proposed changes, which would give AFD Chief Rhoda Mae Kerr more discretion over hiring. The current process includes both written exams and oral interviews, both of which get sent through a lengthy scoring process. Nicks said the AFA likes the current process because it successfully balances the need for diversity with a commitment to high standards for new hires.
“In ground rule discussions, we understood we would be working from existing contract language using strikeouts,” Nicks said. “This was important to us for tracking and comparison purposes. Proposing a completely new language forces us into laborious document comparison, an editing process that we feel is contrary to the spirit of the ground rules discussion. Your hiring article is a dramatic shift away from a long shift of negotiated language regarding hiring and training.”
City reps apologized for what they described as a logistical error (rather than striking the original article and introducing the new text, the AFA received the proposal as an entirely new article) and said they’d fix the issue. Sarah Griffin, an attorney representing the city, said, “We’re happy to redo it for you and give it to you so that you can track it.” She pushed back, however, on Nicks’ use of the term “bad faith bargaining,” and the implication that the city should have started the conversation by offering the AFA something in exchange. “We have something on the table,” said Griffin. “We would like you to seriously consider it. … That’s all we want you to consider. We don’t want you to accuse us of bad faith bargaining because we don’t think we are.”
The current hiring article language was negotiated nearly a decade ago, and Griffin said at the July 6 meeting that the city is merely starting a conversation on how to improve the process. “We’re saying that we’re finding it’s not working,” she said. “We’re finding it’s not working as far as cost goes, as far as time goes. It takes a year to get someone in place. And we don’t find it effective when it comes to diversity. I understand that you are saying it is a valid test. If valid is enough for you, that’s one thing. But we need it valid and producing diversity.”
That’s a point Nicks didn’t agree with, and he told Griffin’s side that it was unfair for the city to characterize the AFA as only being concerned with the test’s validity, and not its success in attracting a diverse applicant pool. Rather than continue bickering over nonstarters, Nicks suggested the two sides come together on an agreement that could improve the length of time it takes to properly onboard a candidate through the process already in place.
The city and AFA have a long history when it comes to negotiations, particularly with regard to hiring. A negotiating standoff in 2013 brought the two sides to an impasse (“The Fire Last Time,” Aug. 9, 2013) and the AFA is still smarting over the city’s decision to acquiesce to the U.S. Department of Justice‘s consent decree and freeze hiring, which the AFA continues to contend hinged only on a technicality. Currently on the periphery is the ongoing negotiation of the Emergency Services District 4’s merge into AFD, and the beleaguered process of bringing the district’s high-quality firefighters into AFD’s fold.
How considerations over the hiring process shake out could go a long way toward dictating the degree to which both sides get along moving forward through negotiations. The two sides have a host of other issues to handle, including pay increases over the next several years, overtime issues, drug testing, and suicide prevention.
The city continues to offer no comment on ongoing negotiations. Nicks told the Chronicle shortly after the July 6 meeting that though the combative rhetoric has died down, the AFA doesn’t intend to bend on the hiring issue. It does, however, remain “very open” to discussion about how to streamline the existing process. The two parties met again on July 12 and had plans to meet twice more this week (Wednesday, as this issue went to press, and Thursday).
“[The city’s proposal is] a nonstarter,” he said. “I can tell you, emphatically, we are not going to sign an article that gives the power back to the chief. That has been a recipe for disaster in the past.”
Support for Drew Garcia?
This week Emergency Services District 4’s Board of Fire Commissioners sent a letter to City Council in support of Andrew Garcia, a firefighter and president of Local 4848 (ESD 4’s union) who believes he’s been wrongfully disqualified from joining the Austin Fire Department, as per the merger between the two parties (“He Checked the Wrong Box,” July 14). The city maintains that Garcia is barred for valid reasons, but he maintains that the decision comes in retaliation for his work as a negotiator on the merger.
Garcia, who was present at the meeting on Tuesday night, asked the board to investigate AFD’s handling of his case. The union president points to his work negotiating with AFD on the criteria it used to determine whether ESD 4 firefighters would be given jobs with the city, specifically his opposition to expectation that merging firefighters be able to hit the 1.5-mile/12-minute running standard. Officially, the city excluded Garcia because he failed to report a 2008 suspension he received in cadet class. (Garcia last week told the Chronicle that he thought “suspended” meant “suspended on the job” when he completed the form.)
“I, along with Local 4848, believe that the investigation was flawed,” Garcia told the board. “We believe there were false allegations made against me, which led the Austin Fire Department to conduct an investigation that violated due process. Furthermore, I, along with the local, believe that the Austin Fire Department retaliated against me because I was a tough negotiator as union president.”
Garcia said he believes AFD’s decision has tarnished his career, because he will be forced to explain the events of the last few weeks any time he seeks a job in public safety moving forward. Before retreating into executive session, commissioners questioned Garcia on whether he wanted an in-house investigation or preferred the district hire an outside investigator to look into the matter. After learning he would prefer the latter, commissioners also relayed advice they received telling them that AFD would be unlikely to cooperate.
After breaking for executive session to further discuss the details, the board decided to write a letter in support of Garcia to City Council, the language of which was still being finalized as this issue went to press. In at least some respects it should mirror the July 13 letter the district sent to AFD Chief Rhoda Mae Kerr calling the investigation a “vendetta.” “We ask that you do not disqualify [Garcia],” that letter reads. “These are not the same applicants you take off the street. Please take the time to see the whole employee; to see the entire work history. We feel that disqualifying [Garcia] at this point is a very wrong reading of the situation. Please reconsider.”
The AFA filed a grievance the same day requesting an independent investigation into whether Garcia is fit for service.
Assistant Chief Aaron Woolverton, who oversees hiring at AFD, told the Chronicle on Wednesday that he stands by the assertion he made in last week’s issue that the investigation was fair and Garcia was barred for valid reasons, and not in retaliation for anything that happened during negotiations. “However, if the commissioners send a letter to Council, and Council gives us a directive of some sort, then obviously we will comply with the directive from our bosses, whatever that might be,” he continued.
Woolverton also dismissed any speculation that the department wouldn’t cooperate with an investigation as “ridiculous,” saying AFD would work with an investigator as much as it is allowed to by law.
“We stand by our decision to eliminate Mr. Garcia from our hiring process for valid reasons,” Woolverton concluded. “And he was not treated any differently than any other candidate in any other process.”
This article appears in July 21 • 2017.