Clarifying The Firefighter Pay Story
Beaumont firefighters lately have gone to the mattresses over their pay.
Their persistence, energy and camaraderie has been admirable. They're passionate about their dangerous work and want to be fairly compensated.
But in some cases it has gone too far, such as when our City Hall reporter got bullied at a meeting, with some firefighters apparently mouthing obscenities regarding her, according to the reporter. They've also been diligent about flooding message boards with their cause.
At least it's just a word war. Decades ago, union fights over pay and benefits often ended in bloodshed and even death.
Firefighters last week won the fight, with a judge upholding an arbitrator's ruling that the city give firefighters an annual 9 percent pay increase for three years.
Under state law, the city is required to pay the firefighters what they would make in the private sector, meaning local refineries, chemical plants and other industries.
From a legal standpoint, the firefighters are on granite, although there are questions over whether their jobs really compare to their industrial counterparts.
On Sunday, the Enterprise wrote a story comparing their salaries - and their pay in three years - to what their counterparts make in similar-sized Texas cities and even pricey New York City.
Compared to the other Texas cities, Beaumont pay now ranks just off the middle of the pack. In three years, they'll be No. 1 almost across the board, and the pay will rival that made by some New York City firefighters.
While some are accusing the Enterprise of taking sides or being negative toward firefighters, that is certainly not the case. Our objective is to present readers with the facts.
Why wouldn't taxpayers want to know how firefighter pay here stacks up?
Where one wheel of the Sunday story fell off the tracks was comparing Beaumont annual pay against New York City annual pay. I should have caught that when editing the story.
As we always do with unclear or incorrect information, we're clarifying the story in tomorrow's newspaper, and the information speaks for itself:
A story on page 1A Sunday comparing the new arbitrated salaries of Beaumont firefighters to those in other cities should have pointed out that New York city firefighters work a 40-hour week. The story compared annual base salaries of the two departments. Because Beaumont firefighters work a 48-hour week, a more accurate comparison would be of hourly wages. Under an annual pay increase of 9 percent for three years, Beaumont firefighters would make more than their FDNY counterparts with fewer than 5½ years experience.
The regular hourly wage for starting New York firefighters is $15.72, compared to the $16.03 Beaumont firefighters would receive. Firefighters with 3-5 years experience make $21.20 to $22.53 an hour in New York, compared to an expected $23.14 an hour in Beaumont. Once New York firefighters have more than 5 years’ experience, they earn $30.44 an hour, surpassing the $23.63 an hour Beaumont firefighters would receive.
The story’s conclusion that Beaumont’s firefighters earn more than New York’s for their first five years was correct, but the difference was not as great as the annual salaries suggested.
Their persistence, energy and camaraderie has been admirable. They're passionate about their dangerous work and want to be fairly compensated.
But in some cases it has gone too far, such as when our City Hall reporter got bullied at a meeting, with some firefighters apparently mouthing obscenities regarding her, according to the reporter. They've also been diligent about flooding message boards with their cause.
At least it's just a word war. Decades ago, union fights over pay and benefits often ended in bloodshed and even death.
Firefighters last week won the fight, with a judge upholding an arbitrator's ruling that the city give firefighters an annual 9 percent pay increase for three years.
Under state law, the city is required to pay the firefighters what they would make in the private sector, meaning local refineries, chemical plants and other industries.
From a legal standpoint, the firefighters are on granite, although there are questions over whether their jobs really compare to their industrial counterparts.
On Sunday, the Enterprise wrote a story comparing their salaries - and their pay in three years - to what their counterparts make in similar-sized Texas cities and even pricey New York City.
Compared to the other Texas cities, Beaumont pay now ranks just off the middle of the pack. In three years, they'll be No. 1 almost across the board, and the pay will rival that made by some New York City firefighters.
While some are accusing the Enterprise of taking sides or being negative toward firefighters, that is certainly not the case. Our objective is to present readers with the facts.
Why wouldn't taxpayers want to know how firefighter pay here stacks up?
Where one wheel of the Sunday story fell off the tracks was comparing Beaumont annual pay against New York City annual pay. I should have caught that when editing the story.
As we always do with unclear or incorrect information, we're clarifying the story in tomorrow's newspaper, and the information speaks for itself:
A story on page 1A Sunday comparing the new arbitrated salaries of Beaumont firefighters to those in other cities should have pointed out that New York city firefighters work a 40-hour week. The story compared annual base salaries of the two departments. Because Beaumont firefighters work a 48-hour week, a more accurate comparison would be of hourly wages. Under an annual pay increase of 9 percent for three years, Beaumont firefighters would make more than their FDNY counterparts with fewer than 5½ years experience.
The regular hourly wage for starting New York firefighters is $15.72, compared to the $16.03 Beaumont firefighters would receive. Firefighters with 3-5 years experience make $21.20 to $22.53 an hour in New York, compared to an expected $23.14 an hour in Beaumont. Once New York firefighters have more than 5 years’ experience, they earn $30.44 an hour, surpassing the $23.63 an hour Beaumont firefighters would receive.
The story’s conclusion that Beaumont’s firefighters earn more than New York’s for their first five years was correct, but the difference was not as great as the annual salaries suggested.
posted by Brian Pearson at 6:17 PM
1 Comments:
Of course the item appeared in Friday's paper, right there on Page 3A. And it really wasn't a correction; it was a clarification. Our information wasn't incorrect. It was just not presented in an hourly comparison, which is what we did in the clarification. As for running it on the front page, we don't run corrections on the front page, and neither does any other newspaper that I know of, for that matter.
The story was correct in noting that under the new pay scale, Beaumont firefighter pay would rival that of FDNY pay.
You can call it BS all you want to, but the numbers speak for themselves. The story also noted that the current starting salary is rock bottom.
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