Compensation

The Firefighters Compensation

It is often touted that we are “highly paid”. That is someone’s personal opinion, said in a way to incite the opinion of the public. It is also said that we have 15-20% annual pay raises. That is misinformation, used to incite the opinion of the public. What this is actually called is step raises and it works like this, as a new firefighter you are paid at a lower rate. As you gain experience, training, and knowledge, your pay increases to the experienced and trained firefighter rate. This takes on average three to five years. All career fire departments have a step raise system. If you consider it reasonable that your firefighters are paid fair and comparable to other firefighters in the area then these step raises create a savings mechanism for the taxpayers as firefighters earn their way to a comparable salary. Let’s look at it like this:

Year 1 the taxpayers save 42% on a firefighters salary

Year 2 - 32% savings

Year 3 - 22% savings

Year 4 - 12% savings

It isn’t until year five that a firefighter earns a “comparable salary”. Once a firefighter reaches the comparable salary they only receive a cost of living adjustment (COLA) of 2%. This 2% is equal to or less than most comparable departments in the region, as well as professional business.

Let’s look at the numbers for the comparable salary, of eleven closely comparable departments in this region:

Mean $82,926.454545455

Median $83,834

Range of $9,866

Minimum $77,530

Maximum $87396

Outliers none

Fishers $83,835

In addition, retirement health care is a point of contention for those that continue to not support their firefighters. Bring us a firefighter contract in NYS that doesn’t have this. The Fishers firefighters actually pay more themselves for retirement health care than others in the region. How can every other district in NYS afford this but Fishers can not?

The fire service requires a high level of physical exertion and it takes a serious toll on a firefighter’s physical abilities and body. As a result many fire departments have a twenty or twenty five year retirement and a retirement age of fifty or fifty five. Throughout a career a firefighter has thousands more “fight or flight” responses than a general worker. This is called noxious alarm response, and it triggers sustained and long term cortisol (the stress hormone) and can lead to hypertension, heart disease and more serious heart conditions and cancers. Throughout a career, firefighters are also exposed to toxins and carcinogens on a daily basis, mainly from fire retardants and waterproofing forever chemicals (commonly called PFAS). These chemicals resided in none other than the firefighters protective clothing that they wear every day. Firefighters are also exposed to diesel exhaust -a mutagen- as well as others like polyvinyl chloride, phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, acrilan, benzene ect. Cancer is a very prevalent occupational disease for firefighters due to those chemical exposures.

This causes firefighters to retire younger than the general workforce, making them ineligible for other retirement benefits that are age specific. In addition just having the occupational history of being a firefighter can cause the denial of an application on the open market. Retiree healthcare is part of the commitment to having career firefighters.

Compensation is fair and comparable and not “out of line”.