- November 18, 2024
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The Palm Coast City Council voted 4-0 against the city firefighters’ union in a special Friday afternoon hearing on two issues brought forward after the city and the union reached an impasse in contract negotiations.
The city’s firefighters, who crowded the audience at Friday’s hearing, have not had a collective bargaining agreement in the almost-four years since they unionized, said union vice president Kyle Berryhill. The council’s consideration of the issue, which is binding, came after the matter went before a special magistrate in March of last year. Most of the sticking points between the city and the union had been resolved before the two parties reached impasse. But the city council rejected the magistrate’s recommendations on the remaining matters Friday.
“I am reasonably comfortable that the status quo with regard to the discipline process, grievance, is reasonably fair,” Mayor Jon Netts said before the vote.
The union had wanted the city’s collective bargaining agreement to include a “just cause” provision that would permit firefighters subject to disciplinary action or discharge have a right to have their case heard by an impartial arbitrator, instead of decided by City Manager Jim Landon — a position endorsed by the special magistrate — as well as another clause, less common in such contracts, that would affect the city’s ability to alter working conditions without the union’s consent.
The city's problem with the just cause clause isn't the need to have just cause for disciplining an employee, said attorney Jeffrey Mandel, representing the city; that's already part of the city's employee handbook. The issue is that including the clause in the contract gives an employee the option to take their case to binding arbitration, a process much harder for the city to appeal than a court hearing or a hearing before the Florida Public Employee Relations Commission.
Mandel dismissed the magistrate’s argument for arbitration, noting that the magistrate was himself an arbitrator.
“It’s like going into a Ford dealership and being surprised that they recommend you buy a Ford product,” he said.
Richard Siwica, representing the firefighters union, said the city is one of a rare few that don’t have a just cause provision in their contracts. The provision, he said, “is simply the requirement that the employer have just cause before discharging somebody,” and that the decision is subject the third-party review. “The existence of that language simply keeps the employer on its toes when it’s going to make a decision about discipline.”
Mandel countered that Landon has never used his power capriciously and doesn’t need a line in a contract to keep him on his toes.
“There’s not a single occasion that anyone’s pointed to that Mr. Landon has abused this position,” he said. “In fact, Mr. Landon has gone so far as to overturn disciplinary action that’s been brought to him when he did not find that it was equitable.”
Siwica said the fact that there haven’t been issues with Landon’s use of that power in the past doesn’t mean there won’t be in the future.
And arbitration is widely used to resolve such labor issues, Siwica said, because “Employers love arbitration. They want arbitration, because they don’t want to be sued …. They want disputes kicked into the faster, cheaper process of arbitration.”
The city would prefer to go to court than before an arbitrator, Mandel said, because “There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that we can do about it” if an arbitrator rules with incorrect facts or neglects to follow the law in binding arbitration."
“An arbitrator can turn around and say, ‘I don’t think you should terminate someone based on a drug test on first occurrence’… and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said.
Speaking toward the end of the hearing, after both sides had been given 45 minutes to present their case and rebut the other side, Landon said the city’s firefighters have good benefits and competitive pay, and that there were only two years in the recession that the city’s firefighters didn’t get pay raises.
“One thing management did not propose is to take anything away from the firefighters that they have today,” he said. “Nothing. Zero. And we’re just asking for the same consideration … Normally if you’re going to give up some management rights, you get something back.”
Landon called the idea that he has the final say on discipline and firing “a myth.”
“I have the final say in the city,” he said. “I don’t have the final say in that the firefighters may appeal my decision.”
Speaking before the vote, City Councilman Bill McGuire said the union already has avenues to file a grievance if it believes an employee was fired or disciplined without just cause. And he said he’s had experience with arbitration.
“In the private sector, for all the years that I was involved in it, arbitration was avoided for any reason,” he said. Typically, he said, the losing side pays for arbitration, and arbitrators’ fees can exceed $1,000 a day. And, he said, ”They render an opinion, and it’s carved in stone.”
Berryhill, the union vice president, said the city’s lack of a just cause clause has driven good firefighters away.
“We were hopeful that the city would have been more receptive to some of our positions, especially since we had such a large turnout,” he said.
The firefighters he fought the city’s 2011 wildfires with are largely gone today, he said. “It’s not the same people now,” he said. “And that’s going to continue.”
