State Board Meeting Supervisor’s
Report
September 15-17, 2009
Fred Flores, State Supervisor Director
Supervisor Rep Cases Have Increased
This
year has had an increase in requests from supervisors for representation. I
have been working closely with President Bob Wolf and Rank & File Director
Ken Hale. One case is active with legal, another has been resolved and others
are pending.
Bargaining
We
continue hoping that the CDF Firefighters Bargaining Team will be able to move
forward with DPA in the near future. This process continues to be stressed
during these economic times. We are hoping once the Rank & File MOU is
ratified the supervisors can move forward with a Meet & Confer with DPA. CDF
Firefighters is committed and passionate to be inclusive in their bargaining to
include supervisors and managers on all extensions and benefits. They are
looking to the future of rank and file employees that will promote into
supervisor positions.
Impacts of Budget Reductions / Pay
Reductions / Furloughs on CAL
FIRE
Reductions to
the CAL FIRE infrastructure have had a severe effect on the fire services in California.
The fire and disaster incidents in California have become more complex over the
years with greater risk towards our citizens. Increased population continues to be threatened.
Unfortunately, firefighters have lost their lives during these devastating
fires. CAL FIRE resources have several challenges between evacuation of residents
and curious citizens, rescue & medical aids, structural fire protection and
wildland fire suppression. In addition, reductions imposed over the
years can be crippling to our operational effectiveness.
Potential Operational Impacts to CAL
FIRE
Furloughs to
our department will generate more costs, reduced service and will have greater
threats to place citizens of California in harm’s way. The retirement of our assistant
chiefs and higher will impact our department’s leadership ability. There is the
potential retirement of incident commanders from the ten CAL FIRE Incident
Command Teams. This will have an impact to the emergency mitigation within
California. Battalion chiefs will have a challenge to accept reduced wages and
benefits to promote to assistant chiefs for the benefit of the state. There must
be a benefit to an employee when they are incurring a promotional change which
increases their workload and responsibilities. Our leaders must be afforded a promotion
without penalty to them or their families.
CAL FIRE’s
infrastructure trends are over 40 years old due to our many years of conserving
costs by maintaining the same infrastructure in the CAL FIRE units. This has an
extensive impact on current cost factors just to maintain this at marginal
operating requirements. There are increased
mobile equipment maintenance costs due to an old fleet caused by constant
reduction to this funding during years of state short falls. This area needs to
remain stable to reduce the high cost of maintaining old infrastructure and
mobile equipment.
Where do we go from here?
CAL FIRE
needs to maintain the current essential service to mitigate disasters in California and adjoining
states during these very difficult fiscal times. We must continue to provide “emergency
response” to medicals, rescues, hazardous materials spills, wildland
fires, structure fires, commercial fires, floods, earthquakes, watershed threats
and other disaster incidents for our citizens. CAL FIRE Incident Command Teams
need to remain intact in order to meet the demands of the department’s mission
and vision. The recommendations to reduce costs or to furlough our department
will generate more costs, possibly reduced service and present greater threats
to the citizens of California.
We must be
reminded that the cost of fighting the major fires continues to be less than 2%
of the total cost lost with commerce, disruption of business days, employee loss
time, transportation, stop of tourism, resource impacts and much more. This
applies to all disasters in our state. California requires a strong and staffed
CAL FIRE to prevent and reduce further revenue losses from disasters to our state
with a strong mutual aid program with other fire departments and fire districts.
We must continue to support a strong and experience CAL FIRE Department.