But the salary increases, which range in size from 2% to 5%, are the only way to ensure Glendale remains a competitive employer and can attract top talent, even in hard economic times, City Manager Jim Starbird said.
“It doesn’t help the public, if we can’t hire frontline service people,” he said. “If you’re not keeping up, and you’re falling behind, then that becomes a pretty deep hole to climb out of.”
With a 5% to 8% employee turnover rate, and a current stock of 100 vacant positions, attracting a talented pool of candidates is a major concern, city executives said.
The salary increases were based in large part on paid surveys of 13 other similarly sized cities in Southern California.
Negotiations centered on maintaining Glendale’s position within the average of those cities, union representatives said.
“Our philosophy going in was that we were not looking to be the highest-paid city in the survey,” said Glendale Fire Capt. John Fitzgerald, vice president of the Glendale Firefighters Assn. “We wanted to maintain a competitive pay rate in order to slow down the attrition rate.”
Community advocates have criticized the Fire Department in the past year after a city list of salary payouts for 2006 surfaced and showed that nearly 30 firefighters made more than $162,000. Much of that pay was attributed to extensive overtime hours logged by firefighters brought in to fill vacant shifts.
The Glendale Fire Department maintains 60 firefighters on duty at any given time. Vacation time, sick days and other time off is often back-filled with overtime hours if it cuts into the staff-at-60 threshold.
