Firefighters’ union and city at deadlock in contract negotiations
- Jasz Garrett
- Sep 24
- 5 min read
Wages are the key issue unresolved as firefighters face burnout, union representative says
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
The Juneau Professional Firefighters’ Union, IAFF Local 4303, reached an impasse in contract negotiations with the city, according to union representatives.
Negotiations opened in February of this year and have been ongoing. Mediation was attempted with the city in July, but without success, according to Karl Wuoti, vice president of the firefighters’ union. Details of the impasse were provided in a press release from the union last week.
Wuoti said while they have reached agreements on other parts of their contract, the current wage proposals remain too far apart to finalize. He characterized the union’s demand as a wage “correction” rather than an increase. He cited a 2024 compensation survey contracted by the city, which shows CCFR's salary range falls within the 20th to 25th percentile of the regional pay firefighters receive in the Pacific Northwest.
In preparation for contract negotiations in January, Logan Balstad, president of the firefighters’ union, asked the Assembly to consider correcting the starting wage to help recruitment and retention. Wuoti said Monday this remains their priority.
“Wage correction is more of showing like through that wage study, saying that we are underpaid, we need to actually correct this wage and bring it up, whereas like, wage increases are more of like, let’s maintain with some cost of living adjustments, and those are usually smaller percentages,” he said. “We’ve been behind and the wage study showed that.”
On April 24, the union released a statement warning of delays to ambulance response times. Capital City Fire/Rescue has been able to fulfill the minimum requirement for the city of two ambulances and two fire engines this summer, but Wuoti said he has noticed increased response times and stacked calls.
“It impacts public safety on the aspect of honestly being able to recruit and retain our employees, and whenever we have low staffing it all comes down to overtime shifts, mandatory overtime shifts,” Wuoti said. “People are working, it’s very common to be working a 48-hour shift, like, for example, I'm getting mandatory overtime tomorrow (Tuesday) to be a paramedic on an ambulance. So I'm on a 48-hour straight shift where I’m not allowed to go home tomorrow on my off-going shift. We’re just working a lot harder, so it’s a lot of that morale kind of thing.”
Fire Chief Rich Etheridge said in an interview Tuesday the department is currently working on an annual report which will show responses and the statistics from calls last year.
Stacked calls refer to a situation where an ambulance that would normally respond is already busy. Instead, one will come from across town or, depending on the nature of the call, someone will have to wait until one of the ambulances is in service.
CCFR is an all-hazards fire department with no other mutual aid due to Juneau not being connected to a road system. For the most recent search and rescue CCFR assisted Alaska State Troopers with an incident on Mount Roberts, Wuoti said the department was able to get a lot of people off-duty to show up, which they rely on.
“It’s not uncommon for those trail rescues, where our on-duty ambulance crew is the search and rescue team going out, making initial patient contact and transporting, which takes one of our ambulances away, or engine out on a call for multiple hours, because those calls take a long time,” he said.
Wuoti said he did not need to go up the mountain that day, but he transported one hiker with minor injuries to the hospital.
City Manager Katie Koester, in an email to the Independent, stated that based on the results of the independent salary survey, the city offered the union “the most generous contract in the history of CBJ wage negotiations with IAFF.” The terms include a conversion to a new wage schedule with a cost of an 11.28% increase in the first year, and an additional 1% increase to wages in each of the subsequent years.
“The City and Borough of Juneau (CBJ) is grateful to the men and women employed with CBJ, including the integral staff of our fire services that risk their lives to respond to emergencies and protect lives,” Koester said. “We could not enjoy the safety and quality of life that we do without their commitment and service to the community. They deserve to be compensated for their time and sacrifice.”
The union did not find the proposed wage increase acceptable, Koester said. Wuoti declined to comment on the specific wages the union is seeking, instead emphasizing that competitive pay is necessary to recruit and retain firefighters in Juneau.
“Our wages just really haven’t kept up with the pace of inflation, the cost of living in Juneau and what that wage study showed, and what everything else is showing, is that it’s also just not competitive with the Pacific Northwest, and really just the region of our profession,” he said.
Following a fact-finding process and hearing, a third-party arbitrator will review the details of the negotiations and subsequent impasse, as well as the positions of each party. The fact finder will then provide a neutral recommendation to the Assembly, according to Koester.
“As fiscal stewards of public funds, the ultimate decision rests with the Assembly,” she wrote. “CBJ Administration is confident that the Assembly will be able to arrive at a fair decision that City taxpayers can afford and that acknowledges the important work of the dedicated public servants represented by the IAFF.”
Wuoti said coming to an agreement will help everybody, including CCFR’s response to the city.
“Dragging out these negotiations as well, as far as it has, is also putting our current staff questioning, ‘Where is this going to lead to, how far are we going to get?’ kind of thing, and the sooner we can reach an agreement, the better, and we can then really start pushing and be more competitive to recruit firefighters and get our staffing back up,” he said.
Wuoti said to the credit of the city’s and fire department’s administration, CCFR started a paid apprenticeship program in June. He added that the department needs to be holding its own Firefighter One and EMT One classes to train up their volunteers.
“We do have an amazing group of volunteers that show up, but again, they can only respond when they’re not at their day job,” he said. “It’s not something to necessarily rely on, but we kind of do, and we’re very, very, very thankful for our volunteers.”
Five interns are doing their EMT skill checkoffs this week and then will be assigned to a shift. It’s a 10-month program and the apprentices will be fully certified the spring of 2026, according to Etheridge.
Etheridge said that CCFR has 42 frontline firefighters and EMTs. It also has 20-25 volunteers. The department had seven vacancies, but five of the positions have now been filled with the interns.
“Really excited about our intern program, because I think it’s going to solve our staffing problems long-term,” Etheridge said. “We’re able to take people even right out of high school. We’ve got one person that joined who’s just 18 years old, just graduated this year, and he’s just this week doing his final EMT testing. And so we could take somebody with no life experience, no formal training, and then just kind of pop them right into the middle of things. They’ve got a career where they’re going to make $50-60-70,000 a year without having to go to college for years.”
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.
