by Michael D. Robbins
Director, Public Safety Project, PublicSafetyProject.org
August 25, 2010
(Updated March 15, 2012 – corrected police union raises from 15 percent to 15 to 23 percent.)
The City of El Segundo, California is at risk of losing its City Fire Department and eventually its City Police Department as a result of greatly excessive and unsustainable salaries, benefits, and pensions for its public employees, especially its fire and police union members. The fire and police unions obtained their excessive and unsustainable labor contracts from mayors and City Council members who received thousands of dollars of their campaign support.
The fire and police union members are the primary cause of El Segundo’s financial problems, yet they refuse to take reasonable and necessary pay cuts of at least 20 to 25 percent. These cuts are necessary for the firefighters and police unions to stop doing harm to the city, its residents, and its businesses. And these cuts are reasonable given the excessive firefighter and police pay, benefits, and pensions, and given their excessive raises during the current recession. The police union members received 15 to 23 percent increases and the firefighters union members received an 11.25 percent increase during the recession that they never should have received.
The firefighters’ and police officers’ unions are only considering a small 5 percent reduction in the scheduled pay increases provided by their current union contract. Instead of reasonable and necessary pay cuts to stop doing harm to the city, they demand that the city increase business taxes, create new fees for residents, eliminate and reduce city services, and contract with Los Angeles County for a reduced level of fire and paramedic services, including a loss of paramedic transport services. This takeover of the El Segundo city fire department by the county would protect the firefighter union members’ jobs, pay, and benefits.
The firefighters and police unions demand that all city employees take equal pay cuts. This is extremely unfair to the other city employees, who are paid less than one-fourth to one-half what the firefighters and police are paid, and who, unlike the firefighters and police union members, are not the primary cause of the city’s financial problems.
The El Segundo Firefighters Association (a fancy name for the firefighters labor union) reminds its members, on its official web site, “Remember, the Local 3682 Board of Directors, work to represent the collective interest of our general membership.”
Thus, the firefighters union admits what we already know, that it does not represent the interests of the residents and businesses in El Segundo when it endorses political candidates at election time, advocates public policy, and sponsors a voter initiative to force our city to lose our city fire department and paramedic transport services, and have to contract with Los Angeles County for inferior fire and paramedic services for a minimum of ten years under state law.
The union only represents the interests of the union members – primarily to maximize their pay, benefits, and pensions at all cost, using every possible union trick to extort more money from the taxpayers, even if it bankrupts the city. Their union contracts have been loaded with such tricks that have bloated their pay, benefits, and pensions, putting the city at risk of losing its fire department and possibly also its police department.
The same is true of the El Segundo Police Officers Association (a fancy name for the police officers labor union).
Furthermore, both the firefighters union and the police union bosses almost always endorse the worst political candidates for public safety, who are also the most liberal tax-and-spend candidates with the worst records. They do not let the union members meet the candidates and vote on whom to endorse and support with the campaign contributions taken from union dues deducted from their paychecks. The union bosses unilaterally endorse candidates, and contribute thousands of dollars of their union members’ money, based on their own political partisanship, and on which candidates will give the biggest increases in pay, benefits, and pensions at taxpayer expense, no matter how excessive and unsustainable.
However, the union members are to blame for the corruption and misconduct of their unions and union bosses, because the union members actively support their union bosses and contribute money and time to the political campaigns supported by their union bosses.
El Segundo Police Officers' Association (ESPOA) Exposed