[quote=no_such_reality]CAR, you’re missing the point.
With the exception of the outliers, I’m actually pretty okay with the earnings the core firefighters make.
That said, I do have several issues:
The first is the giant gap between what they really make and what their published salary schedule says.
For example, Fire Engineer and three Fire Engineer Mast(er)
185 of 187 made more than the published Max. Again, I’m okay with vast majority of the earnings I see there. But can we agree something is wrong with what we say their income or salary is in range X-Y when 98.9% make more than Y, the MAX?
As a person that has hired people, I have very different expectations of the person that I hire that I pay $90K to $100K a year or more than I do of the person I hire making $53K to $63K. Those salaries in the private secctor come with all sorts of side expectations, on-call, unpaid overtime during crunch,travel etc.
If I look at the Fire ‘Fighters’ Fire Fighter I, II, III, Engineer, Captain, SDFD has 700+. 25% make more than 100K. 53% make more than $90K.
Again, I’m okay with that.
However, I have very different expectations of a public servant PROFESSIONAL making $90K, $100K or $110K.
I know from hiring, that I get a totally different caliber of people when I say the salary range for the hire is $80K-$100K than when I say it’s $52K-$63K. We have 341 Fire Fighter IIs in the salary range, 50% made more than $80K. Since there are only a handful of Firefighter Is and only one made more than MIX, the IIs, are our basic PROFESSIONAL.
Can we make them Salary people with Salary expectations without overtime (that’s part of the $80-$100K salary). The job comes with rotating holidays, 24 hour shifts and the expectations that major fires, natural disasters, you’re going to work and you won’t get overtime. But, we’ll be straight up and honest, you’re a firefighter II, you make $70-$110K, you are expected to have certs, maintain certs, etc. You aren’t paid hourly or daily. We expect a $100K a year professional, not a union grunt that needs a bazillion rules to decide who works what shift, and counts every minute.
That’s my point.[/quote]
Thank you for your civil post, nsr.
1. I don’t think you understand how many hours are worked to make these “outlier” wages. It’s much more than what people in the private sector work, even if they work O/T as part of their job. Remember, firefighters work ~2,904 hours/year for their *base* pay (vs. 2080 hrs/yr for a 40-hour work week). From your link above, taking the highest pay for an engineer, they make about $25.64/hr (and that’s the MAX rate). 1.5X regular time is $38.64 (MAX). For the engineer who made $141,665/yr, taking the difference between that and the $74,464 base pay, you get $67,201 in overtime pay. Divide $67,201 by $38.64, you get 1,747.29 hours worked in overtime. This is IF the employee is at the max rate; if he’s making below that (see pay range), he’s working even more hours! (Please check my numbers.)
That means that the employee worked 4,652 hours that year (again, assuming MAX rate, it’s even more hours than that if working for below-max pay) — more than DOUBLE what a regular, full-time employee works. I’m sure that many Piggs could also earn $141K if they worked two full-time jobs (what a perk!!!). They can easily get a second job (or work more hours, etc.) and make that money, since so many are superior to public employees.
2. Not sure if you’ve ever worked with continuous shift schedules where every position has to be fully staffed at all times. The logistics of finding someone at the last minute, while trying to divide O/T among those salaried positions with continuous scheduling (not even sure if they could be legally salaried in the first place), would be a complete logistical nightmare.
