In the ongoing battle for a raise at work, the city responded to our counter offer w/their counter offer today. They’ve piddled around until the deadline is on top of us so we don’t have much choice. While we didn’t get everything we wanted, we did manage to get an 8% increase out of the deal. The increase takes affect July 1st. It is a permanent increase in our job classification which just means they can’t take it away later.
The sad part is the offer is probably too little too late. We are losing 10 bodies in the next 3 months. This offer may serve to keep 1 or 2 of those but that won’t help our staffing levels one bit. As we move into phase 4 of our training to take over the Fire/EMS function, we can’t really afford to lose anyone. The loss of 10 bodies is going to hit us very hard. Even with round the clock training of new people it simply isn’t enough. The numbers for the latter part of this year are going to be scary.