RUMFORD – Selectmen ratified a three-year contract with the Rumford Fire Department late Friday afternoon that preserves the 13-person crew but reduces the gross pay an average of $3,000 to $4,000 per year for each firefighter.
The deal takes effect today.
Richard Coulombe, deputy chief of the department and president of Rumford Professional Firefighters Local 1601, said the loss in salary is due to a reduction in the number of overtime hours allowed each week.
Under the terms of the contract, firefighters can work 53 hours per week on straight time and three hours per week overtime. The previous 56-hour week was broken down to 46 hours straight time and 10 hours overtime.
Four-man shifts will also go from 10 and 14 hours to 24 hours on, and 24 hours off.
“We’ve been on the chopping block since negotiations began in February,” Coulombe said.
He said the town had originally proposed a reduction in full-time staff from 13 to seven.
“This is not a good pill to take,” Coulombe said of the reduction in allowable overtime hours, “but it will maintain our level of services.”
The contract was the result of seven negotiation sessions and one meeting with a mediator.
Town Manager Steve Eldridge said the new shift hours will be tried on a one-year trial basis. An option is in the contract to reopen it if the shifts changes result in higher costs to the town, he said.
Bill Johnston, a member of the fire department, said the town should save about $90,000 in the three years of the contract.
Other components include an increase in the cost of employee-paid health care coverage for dependents and elimination of double-time pay for working on Christmas and New Year’s. Co-pays for medical appointments jumped from $10 to $15.
On the plus side, salary increases are 3.5 percent for the first year, and 3 percent for each of the subsequent two years of the contract. Each firefighter also received a $500 contract signing bonus, partial payment by the town for dental insurance and Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a paid holiday.
The rate per hour now, before the salary increase, ranges from $10.68 an hour for a probationary firefighter to $13.55 per hour for a deputy chief.
“It’s sad we have to get a second job to make up for what we’ve lost, but we couldn’t afford to lose manpower,” Johnston said.
Selectman Mark Belanger left the meeting prior to the vote on the new contract. The remaining four board members voted unanimously to ratify it. The firefighters union ratified it June 23.
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