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This week was a busy week for Local 1014 membership.
We continue our thoughts, prayers, and donations to the OCFA Wildland Firefighters injured in the rollover on the Airport Fire. Brother Scott Ross is assisting the 3631 PEER Support team in their healing journey. Please continue to keep a place in your hearts and your prayers for these young crew members.
LA County’s PEER Support Team is one of the best in the Country and it doesn’t happen on accident. Chief Marrone and President Gillotte - LACoFD and Local 1014 jointly supported and ensure the PEER Support Team with Chaplains remain funded, in service and officially part of the program. While we have become one of the Countries experts on response to critical incidents and tragedies we also have found time to handle proactive - positive work as well. This week, the 3rd annual quarterly training was led by the lead PEER, and one of the topics was self-care and what you do for yourself to decompress and lose your work stress. The PEER team also led a Healthy Relationship Webinar hosted at the Alfred K. Whitehead Labor Center - Local 1014 Union Hall.
President Gillotte and Chief Marrone kicked off the webinar which found just under a hundred members including spouses in a positive proactive discussion and training on relationships in the fire family. How to decompress before heading home, professional counseling periodically, and communication skills including intimacy issues were discussed in a safe and healthy format with amazing information from Dr Steve, and Clinicians Niki, Carl and Lyndee, our behavioral health team. Questions and answers covered many topics of interest and help to our members and their spouses.
The Union and the Department will schedule more webinar-format trainings going forward, and certainly, PEER Support topics and issues will be included. Thanks to all who participated, and we look forward to more. Click here to view the materials from the webinar. |
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KEEPING 1014 MEMBERS AT THE TABLES
Local 1014 brother and member Derek Urwin was appointed officially by Governor Gavin Newsom to the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (OSHA). OSHA is a key component in so many aspects of our profession and having Brother Urwin sit at the table for OSHA will help direct and guide OSHA’s path about regulations and testing and standards to protect our members on so many fronts.
One such venture is wildfire respiratory protection, where Brother Urwin has served for three years alongside President Gillotte with OSHA and NIOSH to work to develop a wildfire respiratory protection unit that works with standards of when and where to be used or required. This project is aligned with OSHA members and his work will translate well to the Board work. Brother Derek handles the nation's firefighter cancer research for the IAFF and CPF and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA. He is also an engineer at 170’s, running calls day and night, and we congratulate Brother Derek Urwin on his appointment and thank his amazing family for their support in all he does. |
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Legislative Update
Local 1014 continues to lobby the Governor along with our allies from other fire Unions. 37 ACT retirement legislation committee unions have been working tirelessly to put forward a couple of items to help our members going forward with pensionability of special bonus’. One such Bill was signed into law. Governor Gavin Newsome signed into law AB 3025 - (Valencia) safeguarding the pensions of employees under the County Employees Retirement Law of 1937 (37 ACT). Previously discrepancies led to retirement systems collecting disbursed funds from retirees and active employees. For example, in 2020 a retired OCFA Fire Captain’s monthly retirement distributions were significantly reduced because he was mandated to repay thousands of dollars under old law. AB 3025 requires that employers stop reporting disallowed compensation.
For active employees, the retirement system must credit the contributions made on the disallowed compensation to the employer against future contributions. Additionally, an employer is required to refund the employee contributions made on the disallowed compensation to the active employee.
This sets up protections for disallowed compensation situations where in fact it was not the fault of the employee and protects contributions made by the employee. This affected OC Fire and Sheriff and other entities in the state literally and protects us all if we should find our members in the same situation.
We are awaiting news on AB 2284 - (Grayson) a bill which deals with establishing Grade for pensionable compensation for job duties schedules and work locations grouped into work based on large numbers of members in the grade doing the work. We are hoping for good news on this 37 ACT bill soon.
Thanks to the Legislative Team at CPF, and to all our partner affiliate Unions who worked so hard on these two Bills. |
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VEHICLE ACCIDENT MEMOS AND PRE-DISCIPLINE ACTIONS
We continue to press forward systemically on the Department for what appears to be a careless and frustrating mass attack on all of our drivers for accidents with no regard to circumstances and without any education and or training for driving as a whole much less for accidents that are truly accidents. While we recognize there are some instances where member fault or disregard for rules or policies have occurred, they are the minority of the incidents and the department is simply shooting a wide pattern spray of intended discipline and paperwork to try and feign like they are doing something about the accidents.
We are pushing forward with our administrative filing to make this an Unfair Labor Charge at the Employee Relations Commission—ERCOM, and we continue to negotiate with the department to set real training and driver enrichment post-accident instead of mass discipline. It has become so bad that folks do not want to drive, especially when they are on multiple days with recall and multiple runs in the shift.
Ideally, a proactive driver training that is regular and recurring for all members and a driver enrichment post-accident training is where we land. Like Groundhog Day, we fight training like EVOC that doesn’t relate remotely to our job or a total lack of training at all for a task of our job that accounts not only for approximately 25% of firefighters' injuries and deaths - responding to and from emergencies. It also contributes to cost with equipment down and not working, which is certainly felt daily with our fleet situation. Director Aaron Katon is point negotiating all of the above, including prospects of bringing back the Vehicle Accident Review Board (VARB) to review and make recommendations on accidents in mass and individually.
In the meantime, we strongly encourage all members - GET UNION REPRESENTATION FOR ANY VEHICLE ACCIDENT RELATED ACTION BY THE DEPARTMENT - BEFORE YOU ANSWER, WRITE, RESPOND ON ANYTHING. It is important to protect your rights as the department hits our membership in administrative mass from the non safety PPS folks who have never been near a Fire Engine or Truck or Squad much less in a response at the end of a 7 dayer with multiple calls per shift - life or death calls. |
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| LA COUNTY FIRE SAFETY - MEASURE E
We are gaining momentum in our push to get the votes for our critical FIRE SAFETY MEASURE E. A redo to the Department and BOS run Measure FD which did pass by the 50% plus one standard we have before us, but only when 2/3rds was the mark.
MEASURE E is a 6 cent per square foot parcel tax which will generate approximately $150 million annually for our fire district. We do not get county general fund money and property tax revenues are our main source of funding. Inflation and the falling amounts of property tax we get for district cities compared to the rising cost of providing that service has made it so crucial for this funding course correction and the first new funding in 5 plus years.
We are going to need you the final week of voting with a phone bank effort from the Union Hall. The Alfred K. Whitehead Labor Center will become the hub of the last few days outreach to voters who will go tot the polls to cast their ballots. Local 1014 is knee deep in digital and tv and mail education to court the Vote by Mail voters in the upcoming weeks leading to Nov 5th. It is critical we pass this measure to ensure our current state of dilapidated apparatus and stations, and future staffing including a move to 4-0 staffing changes.
We have sought out important endorsements and partnering with our communities we have received the LA Democratic Party Endorsement which reaches all Democratic Voters in our District, we have also garnered our own CPF endorsement which reaches all firefighter households in the district aids us with other endorsements, and we received the LA Federation of Labor endorsements which hits all Labor Households which have multiple voters often.
The League of Cities and California Contract Cities recently met with President Gillotte and Vice President Carcioppolo at the Union Hall to discuss our measure and take questions about the measure as well. The meeting went very well, and in our tradition of partnering with our elected leaders and business community members, we earned the Leagues' endorsement of our measure. This is huge and speaks volumes to Local 1014’s credibility with our leaders and our citizens and the confidence in the Fire Chief as opposed to the BOS to manage our money with this ask.
A citizens oversight committee and impact on fire insurance were two key elements of our measure that helped earn an endorsement. Thank you to all our city elected leaders in the League and Contract Cities, and we vow to honor our long-standing relationship with you in all we do.
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In Solidarity,
President Dave Gillotte and the Local 1014 Executive Board |
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