Contract underscores historic differential with firefighters
The firm line taken by arbitrators in three recent decisions involving firefighters and police in Canada has forced the City of Edmonton to reach an agreement with its police service.
After more than a year of negotiations, the two sides avoided arbitration earlier this month after city council approved a new contract.
The agreement sees the average five-year constable receive a 4.5 per cent wage increase for each of 2009 and 2010, along with incremental adjustments.
Those adjustments raise the average salary to 2.6 per cent more than a city firefighter with equivalent experience.
“There has always been a universal recognition that police get paid higher than fire,” says Tony Simioni, president of the Edmonton Police Assn. “We would have been the only police department in Canada — that we’re aware of — that’s paid less than our firefighter counterparts.”
Firefighters in Edmonton reached a new contract in May of 2008, just before the worldwide economic downturn. That contract narrowed the gap between fire and police to 0.9 per cent. When the police agreement came up for renewal one year later, police officers demanded 6.2 per cent in the first year and 5.0 per cent in the second to bring them back to the historic differential of 2.6 per cent.
But economic times had changed and the city couldn’t afford it, according to Pamela Kirkwood, the city’s manager of labour relations.
“If the economy hadn’t turned, the settlement fire received would have been quite reasonable to have replicated with police,” she says. “But when you have the economic downturn that we saw starting in the fall of ’08 and into the spring of ’09, city resources — other than tax money — dried right up.”
After being without a collective agreement since December 2008, police grew increasingly frustrated and started unofficial job action: handing out warnings where a ticket could lawfully be avoided.
“It was very discouraging, and there were a lot of angry police officers,” says Simioni.
On the eve of arbitration, the two sides reached agreement. According to Kirkwood, the city realized it was just too risky given the nature of recent decisions in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador; St. Albert, Alberta; and Brantford, Ontario.
“In each case, arbitrators have maintained historical salary differences between police officers and firefighters,” she says. “And, regardless of economic conditions in the last six months, arbitrators have been pretty unanimous in saying whether it’s the employer who wishes to give less than what the historical difference has been — or whether it is unions trying to lessen the gap and get more — arbitrators have remained steady in saying the historic differential must be maintained.”
To ease the financial burden, the two sides agreed to stage in the increases, to restore the differential over time rather than all at once.
“If it went in the hands of an arbitrator, they could front-end load it,” says Kirkwood. “This staging-in will save the city $3 million.”
The historical differential in Edmonton follows a precedent similar to other police contracts in Canada, outside of Ontario.
In that province, several municipalities — including Cornwall, Belleville, Brockville, Kingston, North Bay and Peterborough — have parity between their police and fire departments.
Kirkwood says she would have raised those examples had the Edmonton police contract gone to arbitration.
Although arbitrators have reinforced that the historic differential must be maintained, she says municipalities may have to be more creative in how they achieve that in future.
“Their salaries may not always be 2.6 per cent if you can show that at some point in the negotiation someone chose to take 0.5 per cent and put that into a healthcare spending account,” she says.
Kirkwood is hopeful that with both police and fire contracts now expiring simultaneously, in December of this year, the next round of negotiations will be easier.
