Bryan City Council and Bryan Firefighters Association come to mutual agreement

The Bryan Firefighters Association and the city came to a mutual meet and confer agreement after the city council unanimously approved the contract during Tuesday night’s meeting.

According to the fire department, there are 152 employees and 144 sworn-in firefighters. According to Deputy City Manager Hugh Walker, almost all firefighters are union members.

The agreement was originally set to expire in December before the city allotted a one-month extension to Jan. 31 for negotiations. The city and the union both proposed revisions to the agreement which included management rights, a no-strike clause, association business, public confidence, fiscal responsibility, staffing, grievances and more.

Since the contract was set to expire during an election year — which sparked controversy in the city — the agreement will now be negotiated every three years or odd-numbered years to shy away from election years, Walker said.

During the November election, the union placed political signage throughout the city with the candidates they endorsed.

On the day before the 2022 November general election, the Bryan Firefighters Association posted political views on its Facebook page and stated:

“All candidates ‘support’ public safety, but only a few are committed to building a stronger public safety through a partnership with its first responders. The City of Bryan has failed to enhance public safety to capture the population growth. They have failed to construct new stations to provide services to our annexed neighborhoods in an appropriate time. They continue to fail to add and maintain apparatuses to address the increased call volume. Your Bryan Firefighters met with every candidate on the ballot and ENDORSED those that plan to address the issues that put your family at risk.”

During the meeting, city staff and council members said they had received multiple calls from concerned citizens who were worried that if they had a certain campaign sign that did not align who the union’s endorsements, that they would not receive care.

“Particularly in my race and one other, we did get a lot of complaints and I want to commend the association for agreeing to put this on our meet and confer agreement and to take it seriously,” Councilwoman Marca Ewers-Shurtleff said. “I think the isolated acts within the very small minority in the association unfortunately rang loudly throughout the community.”

In response, the city requested two articles be added to the agreement pertaining to association business and public confidence. “This last year we received in our office a number of phone calls where some citizens were expressing concern about the election, the number of signs, whether or not frankly if the fire department would respond if they had a certain sign in their yard, and that really concerned us,” Walker said. “We shared that to the union and said we want to introduce something that provides us some confidence in some way that you are going to address that. We don’t want our public, our citizens, to have a perception that they may not get the service that they need.”

Councilman Bryan Edge also said he didn’t want there to be an “erosion of public trust.” Under the association business clause, political activity is noted, and Walker said it will allow union members to share their political stances, as they are not on the clock and that the public confidence is not eroded in the fire department.

Bryan Fire Chief Rich Guisiti explained to the council what the union agreed to in regard to political activity.

“We are talking about political activity to where if they are sponsoring a candidate or want to support a candidate and so forth, then that would not be allowed on duty for us to pay or anything else like that on that part of it,” he said. “It is understood by the union as well as the administration that is not supposed to be done on duty, and that we will not incur any expense for such sort of action.”

One point of contention not in the final agreement was a clause regarding the drug and alcohol policy. Walker said the city will pay employees and their rehabilitation treatment depending on what type of rehab and how it is brought forward.

“We have the ability to provide additional leave; we can provide resources to them, we already have those in place so that is what we talked about,” he said. “And the union seemed to agree, I don’t want to speak for them, but they didn’t push it and we talked through everything else that is there.”

Regarding political activity in the union, Walker said that is a First Amendment right that cannot be taken away.

“In three years we may say, ‘We need to tighten that up a little bit more.’ This was the initial step to say there was a problem,” he said. “We shouldn’t be getting all of the calls we were getting from citizens so we need to address that in some way.”

City staff said the first agreement between the firefighters’ union and the city was approved in 2017, 2020 and ratified again in October 2021 when the council approved an amendment to allow the fire chief an opportunity to appoint a deputy chief and assistant chief.

One of the revisions to the agreement made by the city addressed management rights for the city, provides a no-strike clause for the union, and addresses the fire chief’s appointed positions: a deputy chief and an assistant chief.

The union included one revision which will allow a union representative to be present with a firefighter during an oral or written reprimand, suspension or other disciplinary matter with a chief officer, fire marshal or city management.

Regarding comparable wages, the union proposed and listed eight cities as comparable cities for a salary survey; which were revised to reflect a goal for firefighters to be paid competitively and commensurate with the cities. The cities included Carrolton, New Braunfels and San Marcos.

Under fiscal responsibility, the city proposed the union submit finance requests through the fire chief, except in meet and confer negotiation years. The city also included revisions to the hiring process asking that weighted scores for firefighters go from 20% to 40% on the written exam and from 80% to 60% on the oral exam.

The union requested a grievance procedure for any dispute, claim or complaint involving the interpretation, application or alleged violation of any provision of this agreement.

As the motion went into effect approving the agreement, Mayor Bobby Gutierrez thanked the fire department employees.

“The fire department is one of the many organizations that expose themselves within our city to protect our citizens and keep them away from the hazards that we have here,” he said. “We deeply appreciate them.”

To view the proposed agreement, visit go.boarddocs.com/tx/cobtx/Board.nsf/Public.