CAPE GIRARDEAU FIREFIGHTERS UNHAPPY WITH PROPOSED SALARIES

Proposed pay raises for Cape Girardeau's firefighters and police officers are not what they seem, say officers of the local union that represents the city's firefighters.

Although the city has guaranteed that every city employee will receive pay raises, the proposed 1997-98 salary schedule actually calls for pay decreases for some places on the salary schedule. In addition, a new way of figuring vacation pay could cost firefighters as much as $580 a year, union officials said.

The new pay plan calls for cutting the highest possible salary a firefighter can reach, according to the proposed salary schedule. Under the current plan, maximum pay for a fire training officer or fire marshall is $40,342 a year. Under the proposed schedule, maximum pay for those positions would be $40,185.

"A person here for a career has nothing to shoot for," said Scott Altenthal, a captain in the fire department and vice president of Local 1084 of the International Association of Fire Fighters.

The City Council will discuss next fiscal year's budget at its meeting tonight. Salaries are the largest part of the budget.

At the council's retreat in April, the council's consensus was to raise city employees' pay over the next three years to the average 1995-96 pay level of four Missouri cities of comparable size: St. Joseph, Jefferson City, Joplin and Sedalia.

Since city officials calculated that average as 4 percent higher than current average pay for Cape Girardeau city employees and those cities give their employees an average cost-of-living increase of 2.5 percent annually, the goal was to raise their pay by 2 percent each of the next three years.

City Hall determines an individual employee's pay with a salary schedule. Under the current schedule, a firefighter starts out at $19,102 a year, step A on the salary schedule. After one year on the job, if the firefighter's supervisors determine that the firefighter has had a satisfactory evaluation, that individual progresses to step B or $20,005. The schedule goes up to step K or $26,470.

A firefighter can advance to master firefighter, fire captain, and training officer/fire marshall, each with 11 steps on the salary schedule. Advancement depends on openings.

The proposed salary schedule calls for substantial pay raises for the beginning firefighters. The raise from $19,102 to $20,354 is 6.6 percent. But on the proposed schedule, a fifth-year firefighter's pay is $22,597, while on the current schedule it is $22,800 for a drop of just less than 1 percent.

Under the city's proposed plan, all current workers will get raises of at least 2 percent, said City Manager Michael Miller. If pay for the worker's classification does not provide for that, the worker will advance to the next step at the beginning of the fiscal year and will advance another step on the individual's anniversary date.

This would result in a raise of at least 4.6 percent, Miller said.

Union President Chuck Denson, a firefighter at step I, said this benefits employees immediately, "but in the future, the new people, when they get to step I, they'll be making less than I'm making."

In addition, the city has changed the way it figures vacation pay. Currently, the city regularly schedules firefighters for overtime -- federal law calls for overtime pay for firefighters after 52 hours a week. Under current practice, if a firefighter takes vacation, it doesn't affect how much overtime pay he draws. Under the proposed system, any time a firefighter takes vacation he will lose the overtime from that pay period, Altenthal said.

The proposal is in line with federal law, while the old system was more generous, Denson said.

Altenthal said that change will cost him as much as $580 a year, while his pay raise would be $699, so his raise will only amount to $119 for next year under the proposed pay plan.

Miller said the proposed new pay scales are only the first step. He said that if the city has the money, further increases will follow as Cape Girardeau tries to bring its workers' pay in line with the other four cities.

Mayor Al Spradling III said he favors the overall plan of raising pay to be in line with the four cities, but Miller is in charge of specifics. "We're not micromanaging it," Spradling said.

In another aspect of the budget, city officials previously announced a plan to raise refuse collection fees after July 1. The new budget calls for a 60-cent monthly rise to $12.73 a month from the current $12.13.

Spradling said revenues at the city's transfer station have declined since CWI, a private hauler, opened its own transfer station. Spradling said profits from the transfer station have helped subsidize residential trash service.