The city of Austin and its firefighters signed a new labor contract on Thursday, Dec. 18. The four-year, $63 million agreement approved by City Council and the Austin Firefighters Association increases pay, guarantees a minimum of four firefighters on every truck sent to an emergency, and establishes a new shift schedule that provides more downtime for firefighters between shifts, something AFA leaders say will improve the staff’s mental health.
The contract tweaks an earlier handshake agreement between the city and the firefighters that the city pulled at the last second in November. City staff asked for more negotiations on that agreement after the AFA said it would seek an election next spring to ask Austin voters to make four-person staffing mandatory by amending the city’s charter. At Thursday’s Council meeting, outgoing AFA President Bob Nicks explained that the firefighters believed the election was necessary after they sensed that Council might try to amend or overturn the city ordinance requiring four-person staffing on fire trucks during this fall’s budget process. Nicks and other fire department leaders have repeatedly said that four-person staffing saves lives.
“It became clear to us during the budget process that four-person staffing was going to be reversed,” Nicks said. “So we launched the Safer Austin petition. We didn’t do it in anger. We did it in protection of the firefighters and the citizens we serve.”
To make the contract happen, the city agreed to keep the four-person staffing ordinance. Doing so will likely require the city to find money to pay for firefighter overtime that it did not allocate in the recently completed 2025-26 budget. “When we sign this agreement, the fire department will be in a deficit of $8.3 million,” Nicks said. “And they cannot make it up. It’s not possible. … Once you sign this agreement, it is a gap that needs to be made up.”
Despite the concern over where the money for four-person staffing will come from, members of Council were enthusiastic about the agreement. CM Vanessa Fuentes praised its new shift schedule, saying it creates a national standard that will safeguard the well-being of firefighters. “What I find most promising is that for the first time in years, all of our public safety departments are now under robust contracts,” Fuentes added. “That gives us a much-needed foundation of stability and trust to build upon.”
The Council members also praised Nicks, a gruff, plainspoken, and beloved figure at City Hall, who will step down as president of the AFA in January and be replaced by David Gerard. “I’ve seen and worked with a lot of union presidents over nearly seven years on this dais,” CM Natasha Harper-Madison said. “And it’s not a competition, but I don’t know that I’ve seen anybody match your energy and commitment. I don’t know that I’ve ever been more in admiration of a person who gave me a hard time.”
This article appears in December 26 • 2025.