Sept. 19 -- Houston police officers would receive 7 percent pay raises over two years under a tentative agreement between the city and the union representing officers, city officials said Tuesday.
The proposal, which would go into effect in July 2019, comes as the city is waging a high-profile campaign to defeat a firefighter-backed referendum on “pay parity” aimed at bringing firefighter salaries in line with police officers.
Joe Gamaldi, president of the Houston Police Officers Union, declined to comment on the agreement until union members vote on the proposed deal on Friday. If approved by the union, the deal still would need to be ratified by City Council.
If approved, the contract would go into effect for officers who have completed their six-month probationary periods. Starting pay for police officers begins at $42,000 a year. Once an officer completes his probationary period, pay rises to about $55,000. Under the new agreement, that figure would rise to about $57,000 in July 2019, and then by another $1,500 a year later. The city did not provide a dollar figure associated with the overall cost of the proposal.
Fire union officials congratulated police officers even as they argued that firefighters remain seriously underpaid.
“We are very happy for our brothers and sisters in blue,” said Marty Lancton, president of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association Local 341. “We believe they deserve everything they’ve earned.”
The proposed contract with police follows a separate agreement between the city and its municipal employees, who agreed earlier this year to a 6 percent raise phased in over three years.
Police Chief Art Acevedo said he was proud of the HPOU’s negotiations and said officers had demonstrated the “proper” way to engage in productive labor relations.
“Over the years, the HPOU has been a productive partner with the city and their willingness to support pension reform and their reasonableness has helped the city and department deal with the crippling effects of our revenue cap,” he said.
However, the tentative police pay deal comes against a backdrop of increasingly acrimonious relations between City Hall and the firefighters union over pay, with each side accusing the other of gamesmanship and negotiating in bad faith.
The union has taken the issue to voters, putting a referendum on the November ballot asking for pay parity with police. The administration of Mayor Sylvester Turner contends that approval of the measure will amount to a 25 percent pay raise for firefighters, costing at least $98 million in its first year and as much as $295 million over three years.
Turner has warned that approval of the parity measure would mean layoffs of nearly 1,000 employees, including fire and police, as well as cuts to other city services, including parks maintenance and reduced hours at community centers and libraries.
The HPOU and Acevedo have been vocal in their opposition to the parity measure, speaking against it in meetings at City Hall and on social media, saying it will also lead to increased police response times. Turner is in the midst of holding town hall meetings across the city, urging voters to reject the parity measure.
Turner has said the administration previously had offered the firefighters a 9.5 percent raise over three years, an offer he said remains on the table.
In an op-ed published in the Houston Chronicle on Sunday, Lancton said previous offers by the city to raise firefighter pay in recent years have been “mostly political smoke and mirrors.”
“The proposed ‘raises’ offers came with major workplace concessions, thousands of dollars of increased health insurance premiums per firefighter, and continuing threats of firefighter layoffs and station closures,” he wrote. “In other words, the city expected us to fund our own pay raises.”
Houston firefighters’ compensation lags significantly behind that of other large Texas cities. According to a pay study completed by the union earlier this year, a first-year Houston firefighter makes about $40,000 — or $12,000 less than firefighters in San Antonio, and some $9,000 less than Dallas firefighters.
On Tuesday, Dallas City Council voted to raise base pay for both firefighters and police to $60,000 a year, further widening the gap between firefighter pay in the two cities.
In a statement detailing the proposed agreement with police, Turner championed the two negotiated contracts and criticized the firefighters’ union.
“The firefighters are the only employee group that have chosen not to negotiate a contract with the administration in accordance with the statutorily authored collective bargaining agreement,” the mayor said in an emailed statement. “Rather, they have chosen to ask voters via a referendum to mandate the city to give a pay raise of 25% in the first year, which will cost at a minimum $98 million each year and which the city cannot afford.”
It was not immediately known Tuesday how much the new police contract would increase the city’s costs should voters approve the firefighters’ parity measure in November.
___ (c)2018 the Houston Chronicle Visit the Houston Chronicle at www.chron.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
