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Sisters and Brothers,
We began a new chapter in our Department’s history; the 9th Fire Chief hung his turnout coat up for the last time this week. Every new chapter begins with finishing the last chapter, and President Gillotte along with Interim Acting Fire Chief Marrone helped close the pages of Fire Chief Osby’s story. President Gillotte spoke alongside Chief Marrone at Chief Osby’s luncheon and ceremony. We wish Chief Osby a wonderful retirement and thank him for his 38 years of service to Los Angeles County.
With Chief Marrone as our Interim Acting Fire Chief, we have great hope of a path to better times, but we caution all that there is no magic wand. We will need to complete and construct what is necessary to put our Department where it needs to be. The same Executive Staff is in place, and there is no Chief Deputy of Business Operations at the helm, much less any subject matter experts to help with our finances and budget work to fund essential items.
We thank Chief Marrone for stepping up to take the challenging job and assume responsibility for the work we desperately need from our Chief and the Executive Staff. President Gillotte met with Chief Marrone and will meet weekly as we all get our sleeves rolled up and engage in ongoing and new projects that will be critical to our success. |
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First on the agenda for our membership is our contract. Our people are the number one tool on the engines, trucks, and squads and in our stations. Chief Marrone has the difficult task of arranging budget priorities to get this done. Working with President Gillotte, the Local 1014 Executive Board bargaining team, and the CEO, the difficult task of settling our table while battling a shrinking Fire Department budget is well underway. We look forward to Chief Marrone's ideas to help settle the table.
The Chief and Gillotte also talked about our Department's economic and working health. The two most significant areas are reforming and rebuilding our broken workers' compensation and return to work practices and procedures and putting together a signature petition ballot measure for sometime next year.
The workers' compensation system is in a crisis. We have indicated we would like to pick up where we left off with our first meeting to work on solutions to get our people healed and back to work quickly, eliminate the lack of oversight from our third-party provider, protect and smooth our system for members to move to retirement, and curb the onslaught of members off on Injury, many of whom are young and healthy as we approach more than 400 members per month. This cannot be sustained.
The cost is not just our members' health, but also nearly $220,000 million annually—money we desperately need for our raises and Department infrastructure. We have asked the Department to join us in declaring this a crisis. We asked them to do something about it by meeting every two weeks to evaluate what's working and what is not, and to make changes in real-time where needed. The Department has agreed, and we are back underway to get after this project.
More than a handful of items agreed to by both Labor and Management were identified at the first meeting that are still not implemented. Chief Marrone has begun immediately moving to get items in place, starting with approving and installing the administrative staff the RTW office needed to handle the volume of claims. The soldiers are in place so we can begin tracking and resolving the open and outstanding cases with other tools we have in hand by agreement. Stay tuned as this takes shape and we move to end the rash of inured members off duty causing the vacancies driving the bulk of our recalls.
The Union has proposed bold behavioral health tools be embedded into our WFI Physicals with annual evaluation from our PEERs and or Culturally Competent Clinicians as we build the tools to help our members PROACTIVELY. Annual behavioral health check-ins with trained and confidential folks who can have a simple uncomplicated conversation to hear what’s going on with our members, and connect them with the resources they may need to help bring balance, reduce anxiety, depression and behavioral health issues.
We also have been working on a behavioral health evaluation tool similar in nature to reasonable suspicion criteria to evaluate and act on members who are not behaviorally suited to be at work. We have seen the worst tragedies that can impact any department, and we cannot and will not simply use the tools of the past. We boldly put forward an initiative within our Department and also through the State Behavioral Task Force to create a guideline of criteria that can be used and applied to remove someone from our worksites without any threat to income or their livelihood and require they be evaluated formally and receive the needed treatment to come back to the floor.
We support the statement and movement that “no member has the right to be so verbally or physically angry or hostile that others at work feel unsafe.” We believe most of our members think and support the same. Our commitment is to move to better tools not just to report incidents and issues where Department CPOE or PPS fail us, but to put fundamental tools to deal with individuals and circumstances with follow-up help to deal with the core of the issues, not just the symptoms.
We have also proposed a leadership program to give the skills to the managers who deal with these issues and, as we have learned, often do not because the case has moved to CPOE or PPS, both failed systems and programs that do little to help solve the problems.
We look forward to finishing this work with the Department and the BOS that has been ongoing for the past year plus and launching formally with these items. Chief Marrone has committed to supporting and working with President Gillotte, who chairs the State Behavioral Health Task Force to bring best practices to the state fire service agencies and Unions.
We have also convened the staffing, hiring, and promotions committees to get back after the operations issues regarding our vacancies and filling and promoting positions, and getting approval on many staffing agreements that have never been fulfilled. We look forward to Chief Marrone’s commitment to remove obstacles and empower trials, such as a proposed two mental health recall refusal days per year and possibly the ability to earn more mental health recall refusals by going available to work SRC. This trial proposal would put a limited but sometimes very necessary power to control your days when a recall comes your way and your work-life balance or a particular situation conflicts seriously with the recall. This is one example of many items that have been in the process but never fulfilled that Chief Marrone has committed to reviewing and where he approves rapidly implementing.
We look forward to working with Chief Marrone on the path to a brighter and better future for the best fire department in the world. We have always led from the front and in the struggle for all departments to get full staffing, promotions, decrease injury, and establish better tools for work-life balance and behavioral health, we can and will lead. This is a new day and there is a lot of work to do together, but we are confident that Chief Marrone will move to light up the Department's efforts and accountability going forward.
NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE
Fringe benefits bargaining continues every Wednesday and we are pleased to let you know we have achieved agreement on the monies needed to increase our medical, dental, and vision premiums. We continue to work on critical language that affects our labor-management partnership in setting medical rates, benefit levels and costs within the County, and other items from the fringe contract. We hope we will have a fair deal in hand very soon. The County negotiations from the CEO’s office, the 18 Unions of the CCU led by President Gillotte as the Chief Negotiator, worked through two very stressful and tedious 10-hour bargaining sessions. Keeping up with medical inflation for our benefits premiums is a critical component to keep money in our members' pockets and will show up on our salary table once both contracts are done.
On the salary table side, we remain deep in the proposals affecting our additional Vacation Days, Fit For Life Program, and other important Plan C post-PEPRA firefighters. We met today to work on the language needed for these issues. We also continued to see the County stall on the COLA and declare no more authority or ability to find the path to COLA agreement. We laid out very clearly the path and the obligation of the Department to work to meet the mark on the budget. Chiefs Breshears and Pena also sit at the Department table. Both were advised that their involvement, absolute dedication, and commitment to helping find this path is critical to getting this done is needed. They are committed managers and left today with a clear understanding of the situation heading into next Friday.
The Department and CEO will either have done their work to come back with a proposal that moves on the COLA and addresses key and very refined proposal items, or we will be done talking at the table and will move to what we need to do to bring to light our situation in the County.
This is all taking place as we get prepared to protect our people in the throws of wildfire season. No one wants labor unrest, but the fact is that our Department needs to recognize and support the number one tool in the stations and sites, our members, alongside all other County workers.
Thank you to the Local 1014 Executive Board bargaining team for their hard work. We will also be preparing to open up the 603 - 604 non-safety members table this next month. These times are strained and challenging, but we know with our membership's resolve and solidarity, we will get a fair deal done for all. |
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LACERA ELECTIONS: VOTE LIKE YOUR PENSION DEPENDS ON IT!!!
It is a critical time for our Firefighters. For the last several years, we have had Will Pryor representing us on the LACERA Board, and that has ensured that our members and their families have a strong voice when major decisions are being made that affect our pensions and our retirement. Will is currently serving out his last term, and we are forever thankful and grateful for his many years of service to our members.
Now it is critical that we continue to have a firefighter on both the LACERA Board of Retirement and the LACERA Board of Investments. That is why we are asking you to vote for our own Local 1014 Director Jason Green. Jason will continue to be a strong voice to safeguard our pensions and ensure that our members receive the retirement benefits they have earned.
Jason Green is our endorsed candidate for both the Board of Retirement and the Board of Investments, so be sure to mark his name in both sections!
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Safety Members who were active Safety Members as of April 15, 2022, can vote in these elections. Eligible voters will be able to cast their vote either online or by telephone. The online and telephone voting system will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through August 31, 2022.
Safety Members eligible to vote in this election with valid County email addresses were emailed login credentials and voting instructions to their FIRE DEPARTMENT email address.
If you lost your voting credentials or have not received them, please contact LACERA_Election@bos.lacounty.gov or (213) 893-1151
WE NEED TO ENSURE OUR MEMBERS CONTINUE TO HAVE STRONG REPRESENTATION ON THE LACERA BOARD. VOTE LIKE YOUR PENSIONS DEPEND ON IT.
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“TAKE THAT SHORT SLEEVE JACKET OFF! TAKE THAT BELT BUCKLE OFF!, TAKE THAT HAT OFF! REMOVE THAT PATCH! The Uniform Cops are back. Talk about out of touch!
Let us preface this by saying that uniforms and proper representation to the public are important and all of us fully support that. And when images or words stray into unacceptable logos, patches represent things our communities would not embrace or support, they must be handled. And also, there are many, many amazing chiefs who support us and work alongside us every day. Know that we support you!
But when long-standing, battalion or specialty-oriented patches, buckles, hats, shirts that have been a source of pride, dedication and camaraderie for our Department come under attack from the managers, we have a problem. While we must keep and have a professional image on runs and in the eyes of the public, there are so many great examples of LA County Fire Pride to support and approve! We call on the Fire Chief to own each and every approval or denial of logos, patches, and buckles.
Stop the madness and get some sanity back into the system! We will tackle this formally Monday and hope the administration can work to ensure professional and appropriate pride for our work and our family.
Additionally, our Department disallowed the voluntary wearing of Pride patches a couple of months ago. The same Pride patch that was supported by Sheriff Villanueva and even worn by him, was NOT SUPPORTED BY OUR DEPARTMENT!
Local 1014 supports all pride tools for ALL of our members, including the Pride Patches the Department feared so much. More to come as we fight for LA County Fire Pride in all its forms. |
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In Solidarity,
President Dave Gillotte and the Local 1014 Executive Board |
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