Privatization studies banned

Las Vegas firefighters last week became the second of the city's four bargaining units to finalize a labor deal with the city, though the five City Council members who approved the deal blinked, failing to get the freeze on all scheduled raises coupled with an 8 percent cut in compensation for 2011 and 2012 that Mayor Oscar Goodman and other city leaders had set as their goal.

The package will supposedly help the city save $6.5 million over the next two fiscal years, by eliminating any cost-of-living raise this year. (The firefighters' previous contract called for a 3.5 percent increase.)

Step raises, which had been averaging about 5 percent a year, will be cut in half for the next two years, and the starting salary for new employees will be cut by 5 percent. A city firefighter's base pay now is $44,947 to $77,602 a year.

That is indeed progress, though Councilman Stavros Anthony, who voted against the deal, was right to be "disturbed" by a city concession that it will not seek studies of privatizing emergency medical services for the next two years.

The city should be able to study anything it wants, Anthony said. He also worried that the concession would set a precedent at a time when Las Vegas is -- quite sensibly -- studying privatization as well as consolidation of some government services with other local governments.

Indeed. Privatization may be the only long-term solution, if municipal unions continue to drive labor costs beyond what taxpayers can afford.

Meantime, in guest opinion pieces submitted to the Review-Journal, spokesmen for the firefighters union have repeatedly insisted their members earn "base pay of roughly $22 an hour" (including time spent sleeping and working out during their ten 24-hour shifts per month, of course), to which they quickly append "We don't make overtime policy."

Sounds like a good basis for negotiations, next time around: $22 an hour, with no overtime or other "enhancements" or "differentials" -- since the union says they don't have and apparently don't desire any "role in setting overtime policy."

$67,000 is a good living by anyone's standards. Maybe firefighters should be paid just what their own union says they now receive.