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DEPLOYMENT ALERT - LA COUNTY SEARCH DOGS
This week, FEMA has requested three of our Canine Search Teams to join the ongoing recovery efforts following the devastation of Hurricane Helene. This powerful Category 4 hurricane left over 200,000 homes without power, displaced thousands of families and tragically claimed more than 200 lives. The destruction has been widespread, with flooding and debris making rescue efforts even more challenging.
Our dedicated teams were mobilized and are now en route to North Carolina to assist in the search for those still missing:
- Capt. Serrano & K9 Prentiss
- FFPM Bartel & K9 Six
- FFPM Munguia & K9 Clifford
These specialized teams are trained in human remains detection and will play a critical role in bringing closure to those affected by this tragedy. Our hearts and thoughts are with them as they embark on this vital mission. Stay safe out there! |
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WELCOME SHALAURA SOLIAI - LOCAL 1014 HEALTH AND WELFARE’S NEW PLAN MANAGER
Local 1014 Health and Welfare Plan is our for firefighters, by firefighters Health Plan. We have been through many changes to move with the dynamic and ever-changing healthcare rules and world, including managing funds similar to a pension fund to ensure the benefits we enjoy can be funded.
Reg Cyrus has been our plan manager for the last ten-plus years. We navigated some very trying times in the market and some shifting rules on national health care. We even added excellent benefits in vision, dental, implant, mental health and fertility. We thank Reg for his dedication and hard work on behalf of our members, and we’ll have Reg as a consultant to help with any outgoing issues.
It is time to move our plan to a new level of service and medical care, including fertility and family planning issues, mental health and Firefighters' behavioral health, and coordination of benefits with our own Department Workers' Compensation program, which is often in a state of disarray.
We are proud to announce that on October 1st, Shalaura Soliai became our first woman Plan Manager and CEO. Shalaura has over 20 years of experience as a healthcare plan operations executive and comes to us with experience from Discovery Behavioral Health, a Veterans, Tri-Care, Medicaid, and Medicare facility operation, and NASA experience in strategic initiatives and evaluation of scientific proposals with a myriad of perspective on the work as it rolled out. Shalaura has worked with private equity-backed start-ups in health care, to legacy companies in multi-state and multi-site health plans with operations in hospitals, clinics and provider networks, including Vitality Medicare Health, Verity Hospital System, Care 1st Blue Shield, and Liberty Dental Plan. She holds an MBA from the University of La Verne and a Doctorate of Education from Purdue University.
Shaluara’s approach to health care is characterized by a commitment to ensuring that quality care is accessible to all individuals in a timely and supportive manner. We want to improve some operational aspects of our plan, making the best care you can get easier to access and revising systems to modernize and make our processes more fluid so that our members and their families can spend more time handling the difficult and important decisions about care.
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We also are working on a plan to hold the Department accountable for their worker's compensation administration, in particular for presumptive claims for cancer, heart, lung, PTSD, etc., and also behavioral health and ortho claims that plague our members. Remember, our worker's compensation system is self-funded with a third-party administrator, but the Fire Chief is ultimately the CEO of the system. While we have worked hard to negotiate and implement a robust worker’s compensation division with a Chief, Captains and staff, we still have to deal with the third-party administrators and the doctors who sometimes refuse or do not know how to best move care along for safety members who have backfill behind them. In the end, it is the Fire Chief who must step up to regulate and demand better service for his members. We will propose a dynamic and progressive never-before-tried system of coordination of benefits with workers' compensation, where work comp must PICK UP THE CLAIM, as they should be doing anyways. Then use of the health plan to treat our members with predetermined reimbursement rates and schedules for said service would be in place for the department to pay us back. As it sits now, we must treat, and place liens back on the department for treatment costs often only netting us 70 cents on the dollar. This is inexcusable on the Department's behalf. We are working collaboratively with the Fire Chief to try and draft a trial; Shalaura is very interested in this project and will ultimately use her experience to help us negotiate and implement this program, benefiting our members immensely.
We look forward to her work, and she will be conducting some outreach to membership to help find perspectives on how we grow and become even better. Welcome to the Local 1014 Fire Family! |
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NOTICE FOR PLAN C MEMBERS
For our Plan C members regarding the pensionability of bonuses, most of your bonuses are pensionable, minus a few small ones.
If you have questions about your pension or retirement, please reach out to your Local 1014 Board, LACERA/1014 Board Member Jason Green or LACERA directly about pensionability or retirement.
Do not take advice from third parties selling products or listen to kitchen table rhetoric. Get your information from reliable sources who understand our pension and retirement system and how to help you maximize your dollars. |
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| LA COUNTY FIRE SAFETY - MEASURE E
This week, we continue to push forward on the Measure E campaign, with our comprehensive digital and mail campaigns set to roll out next week as ballots hit mailboxes.
As we have said many times, political action is the most important thing we do to affect our wages, hours, and working conditions. This measure is the first citizen initiative ever run in a special district. We will need every member of the community to tell their story. With an aging fleet, outdated communication equipment, and staffing below the national 4-0 standard, we have a lot on the line. We need our members to band together for our future.
We will be looking for volunteers for GOTV weekend and phone banking in the weeks leading up to the election to push this over the line. The Alfred K. Whitehead Labor Center will become the hub of the last few day's outreach to voters who will go to the polls to cast their ballots. LET'S GET IT DONE!
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LATEST ROUND OF CAPTAINS PROMOTIONAL EXAMS
Local 1014, alongside every member of this department, stands in “awe and shock” watching the last two Captain promotional exam processes. The written exam, in particular, has gone off the rails with 80 plus signed up and only in the 20s passing and moving on to the next steps. The net result 10-15 on a list? This cannot continue, and Local 1014 has approached the Department to analyze what is going on and work to make corrections to get a fair, accurate testing process back on track.
Many rumors are circulating about what happened, from no curve applied to the test to the raw 70% mark to Big County DHR taking over the written. What happened? No one knows, but what we do know beyond the numbers, which are atrocious, is we have good members who are educated with ten years plus experience who are not coming close to passing, and that in itself is enough to warrant emergency actions to correct what is going on. Why is it so hard to test “job-related concepts” in a variety of ways to question in a fair and easy-to-prepare and study manner? Universities and educational institutions worldwide, as well as the military and other professional fire departments, have systems and processes in place that work. A novel concept is a fair and balanced written exam followed by an in-person evaluation of administrative skills and emergency responses or an oral interview where questions and answers can be managed and recorded.
More on this as we progress in our talks and likely ultimately an unfair labor practice filing to bring leverage pressure to bargain back to fair with big county in the mix legally by way of our settlement. In the meantime, like in the past, the appeals process will be the final part of the exam for our members, and we encourage you to challenge all aspects of what is not right in your competitive work in the exam. |
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In Solidarity,
President Dave Gillotte and the Local 1014 Executive Board |
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