Today, Mayor Ed Murray announced that the City of Seattle and the Seattle Fire Chiefs Association Local 2898 approved a four-year contract agreement. Local 2898 represents 24 Battalion Chiefs and nine Deputy Chiefs.
“Our firefighters keep Seattle safe every single day and today’s announcement allows the fire department to continue to provide world-class fire protection services to this city,” said Mayor Murray. “I want to thank Chief Harold Scoggins and Seattle Fire Chiefs President Tom Walsh for ensuring that discussions related to Battalion 2 were made a priority during contract negotiations.”
“I am excited that through this bargaining process we were able to work with the Fire Chiefs to restore a dedicated Battalion Chief in Battalion 2, our busiest response area in the city,” said Fire Chief Harold Scoggins. “This will not only help with incident management, but assist training and readiness preparedness across the downtown area.”
The contract is retroactive, effective Jan. 1, 2015 to Dec. 31, 2018. It includes retroactive annual wage increases of 2.2 percent, 1.1 percent, and 3.5 percent respectively for 2015, 2016, and 2017, and 100 percent of the Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton Consumer Price Index for 2018. Effective Jan. 1, 2018, the agreement re-establishes Battalion 2 in order to reaffirm the City’s commitment to provide dedicated Battalion Chief coverage to downtown Seattle. During the contract negotiation process, both parties took a collaborative approach to ensure significant priorities were met. The parties came to agreement on general expectations for employee conduct and operational efficiencies such as assignment of staff to special events, including Seafair and the PrideFest, and reducing the minimum hours required to be off-duty for certain schedule changes.
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