Friday Update 11-20-20
Updated On: Dec 03, 2020

Los Angeles County Firefighters IAFF Local 1014

Representing over 3200 Firefighters, Paramedics, Dispatchers,
Pilots, Wildland Firefighters, Fire Prevention, Forestry

and Health Haz Mat Personnel

Friday Update 

Brothers & Sisters,

As we wrap up this week, we would like to remind everyone to mail their ballots if you have not done so already. Ballots will be counted on Monday, November 23rd, beginning at 10:00 am. Make your mark on the important work of electing your Union leaders and VOTE.  

                                 

Official ballot counting is handled by the California Election Company (CEC), a professional election company that runs the elections for many unions throughout Los Angeles County and the State of California. Click here to view the full list.  

The CEC handles the actual ballot production, mailing, and tabulation with state-of-the-art electronic equipment, redundant matching ballot counts, and member verification steps.  Each ballot has an outer envelope signed by the voting member used to check in the ballots, verify member status, and ensure one vote per member.  The ballot is then removed from the first envelope. The second unmarked envelopes are mixed and then opened to ensure anonymity. Finally, the ballots are counted against ballots received to verify counts and fed into machines for multiple counts to ensure matching counts.  

President Gillotte appointed a Local 1014 Elections Committee. Additionally, each candidate has the ability to appoint an observer who can be in the counting room and watch the entire process.  This process has been in place for over 20 years of elections and is compliant with the Department of Labor and Elections Standards. We are very proud of the integrity of our process. 

Also attached you will find a list of Local 1014 Elections Committee members. Co-chairs Randy Walton and Erin Regan will guide the work of CEC work with input and assistance from our attorney and CEC.  Good luck to all who are running! We have much work to continue after the elections are over!! 

IAFF Union Elections 

Both the California Professional Firefighter’s (CPF) and International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) conventions and elections are also upon us in December (CPF) and January (IAFF).  Your Local 1014 Executive Board has been very busy reviewing Convention Resolutions and candidates to represent Local 1014’s interests as we work with other Local affiliates to craft our priorities at the state, national and international levels for the next two years.  

As a national leader, Local 1014 helps craft policy and legislative resolutions that affect our international Union's direction.  Issues such as collective bargaining, pension and health care protections, health and safety, cancer prevention, and behavioral health are the legislative priorities we will be pushing for in the next two years.

After careful consideration and interviews and assessments, Local 1014 is proud to announce the endorsements of the following candidates for the IAFF Executive Board seats.  

IAFF General President - Mahlon Mitchell 

Mahlon is a veteran Firefighter for the City of Madison, Wisconsin, and President of his home Local 311 as well as the current State President of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin.

Local 1014 has a special connection to the IAFF through our former Local 1014 President and IAFF General President Emeritus Alfred K Whitehead. We are proud to endorse a candidate who will carry on the legacy President Emeritus Whitehead began of solidarity, inclusion, and honor at the national and international levels. 

General Secretary-Treasurer - Frank Lima

A longtime friend and warrior for our issues. As a 30-plus year Fire Fighter in the City of Los Angeles and a Union leader, Frank has shown the type of passion for our trade and our members we need at the national and international level. Whether it is fighting for critical legislation and funding for our members' health and safety or showing up for our members who lost their homes during the devastating wildfires last year, Frank has demonstrated time and time again a commitment to this union and our members.
 
During his time as IAFF 10th District Vice President, he has built solidarity and unity across our diverse regions of California, Arizona, Hawaii, Guam, and New Mexico. We have no doubt that he will bring transparency, resources, and accountability to our union's highest level.  


10th District DVP - Domingo Alby Albarran 

A 35-year LAFD Firefighter and decade-plus Union leader.  We have worked on many issues with Alby, including the cell phone antenna fight, Cancer Presumption 2, and behavioral health legislation for presumption. As the largest district in the IAFF, the 10th District is a diverse but strong district. We need strong leadership to not only bring us together under the banner of union solidarity but also continue to fight for wages, hours, and working conditions throughout ALL the states in the 10th District. With his background in union leadership and proven track record of transparency, honesty, and accountability, we know that Alby is the right man for the job.  

We look forward to helping these outstanding leaders to lead the IAFF.  We will put out more information as we near each convention. 

DEPARTMENT HUMAN RESOURCES IN A STATE OF CHAOS 

It is clear to all by now that the Department’s administrative sections and divisions are in an absolute state of chaos and disorder.  The entity in charge of discipline, entry-level hiring, recruitment and retention, promotional exams, appeals, and our budget is ineffective, under-resourced and out of touch with our staffing and career standard needs.  

We will continue to work with the Department where we can to negotiate, collaborate, and help implement solutions where appropriate in order to get the work done. We will also take adverse positions and legally and politically leverage our power to halt the Department where they overreach or fail through cease and desist and unfair labor practice charges to force solutions.

It is unfortunate that the moral compass and professional standards of operations with our Human Resources management is absent.  We want to stress that the workers, the good Union folks that work in Human Resources are doing good work. They are under-resourced and we are lobbying for additional help for them.  

There is no plan to streamline, improve and ensure credibility for our hiring and promotional processes including medical and background checks.  When candidates are noticed with 5 days or less to report to the drill tower, when we have arbitrary and capricious medical standards, when background and hiring processes take over 8 months to complete causing us to lose many good candidates including diverse candidates to other agencies, it is time to revamp, review and retool the Human Resources offices. 

We are aggressively seeking sworn badged oversight to help guide the many important civilian workers we need as experts to get this work done.  We will be meeting formally with the Department to discuss the staffing shortage in HR, the entry-level and promotional processes and help set a calendar in non-fire months to establish regular hiring and promotional lists so we don’t end up short in any rank for staffing.  We will report to you the agreements we garner, or if we need to go to the Employee Relations Commission or Civil Service to legally push these changes.  

Along those lines, we have reached our wits end in dealing with the Department and the Department representatives for the latest Engineers and Captains promotional processes, and we are filing formal appeals to the Civil Service Commission on behalf of those members who want to appeal their AP calculations on the Captains exam. 

The Chiefs in charge of the Department side of the AP and Appeal process are new and devoid of perspective on how we jointly evaluate and grant or not grant credit for items where credit is not only due but fairly applied.  This year we have seen the culmination of a degraded AP process and an uneducated and unbending team from the Department that seems more hell-bent on trying not to grant points on technicalities rather than establishing veracity and accuracy when applying credit.  

Members work very hard their whole careers to achieve in this great Department. When it’s time to list that work inappropriate AP categories prevent it from being counted in a competitive exam process, it is not only wrong but discouraging when the Department fails our members. 

We look forward to the fourth and final step of the exam process, the Civil Service Appeals where those who appealed their issues along with the Union will teach the Department a lesson on how a fair and unbiased exam process and appeal process works.  We had to do this exercise in educating the Department back in the day. Great Chiefs like Eric Ekeberg and Ron Magnuson along with Union Executive Board Members crafted the AP structure, educated candidates prior to the exams, and sat side-by-side to review and agree on appeals.  We will get back there as we formally hold the Department accountable for their work.  Hang on as we tackle this project on behalf of our members, and on behalf of the system.  

Thank you in advance for your vote and your voice. As always, stay safe and take care of each other. 

 In Solidarity and Strength,

President Dave Gillotte and the Local 1014 Executive Board 


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