Government officials with the city of Philadelphia recently announced that they had reached an agreement with its city’s firefighters’ union. Said agreement is a three-year contract that offers increases wages for union members as well as a commensurate increase to the money that is to be set aside for pensions. Mike Dunn, a spokesman for the office of Mayor Kenney, stated that the agreement is expected to deplete Philadelphia’s coffers by $150 million across the span of six fiscal years, including the current one which concludes in June. Mayor Kenney’s administration is still assessing ways of funding the union contract, which will begin in July and conclude in June of 2020.
International Association of Fire Fighters Local 22 represents not only firefighters but also paramedics. Its members will receive a retroactive pay raise of 3.25 percent for the current year. This will further rise to 3.5 percent for fiscal year 2018 and 3.75 percent for 2019 and 2020. Employess will also be required to raise their pension contributions, which account for more than $57 million, across the next 13 years.
The local chapter of the IAFF signed the city’s contract once an arbitration panel awarded it to them. Ed Marks, president of that chapter, stated that the union was overall agreeable to the contract as it contributes to better wages and life insurance. Marks added that the only black mark on the deal, to some, would be the rise in pension contributions. He confessed that the city’s pension fund was being imperiled and improperly managed and that Philadelphia should not try to fix pension issues through the sweat of IAFF’s members. Marks concluded his statements but expressing his disappointment over the city’s failure to consider pursuing a a counter proposal that would push for pension changes mirrored by a similar contract agreed to by police officers in 2017.
The city of Philadelphia has stated its goal of having pensions funded to 80 percent by 2030. It sees the IAFF contract, the agreement signed with police in 2017 and a previous agreement reached with municipal workers in 2016, as steps toward achieving that goal. It has also stated that it would seek pension changes with AFSCME District Council 47, a union for white-collar workers. While pension costs for the local chapter of the IAFF will rise, most of the funding of Philadelphia’s pension fund will be contributed by the city’s taxpayers.
