Committee Agrees to Let Firefighter Salaries Catch Up to Police Officers'

A proposed two-year labor agreement with Los Angeles firefighters that won approval from the City Council’s Personnel and Animal Welfare Committee today would eliminate a 2 percent wage disparity with the city’s police officers.

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If the contract is approved by the full council, firefighters and fire captains would not receive pay increases this year but would see their salaries go up by 2 percent starting July 2015 to match police officer salaries.

If the police union, which is still negotiating its contract with the city, secures even higher wages, the city would agree to apply the same increases to firefighter salaries, under the contract.

Firefighters would also receive an immediate 2.5 percent increase to a monthly dental insurance subsidy, and another 2.6 percent increase in July 2015. The city would also increase its monthly health insurance subsidy for firefighters by 5 percent starting in July 2015.

The contract would cost the city $1.6 million in the current fiscal year, which started in July.

Since there is no increase to the monthly health insurance subsidy this year, the contract would save the city an estimated $2 million.

The contract, which does call for the 5 percent increase to the health insurance subsidy next year, would result in $12.9 million in costs for the city in fiscal year 2015, bringing the full amount of the two-year contract’s costs to taxpayers to about $13.5 million, according to a city report.

--City News Service