By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Levy County government officials are no closer to inking a union contract than they were in mid-December when the International Association of Firefighters Local 4069 turned down an offer for a $4 per hour pay raise across the board.
County Coordinator Wilbur Dean said he has no plans at this time to go back to the negotiating table with the union.
“We’re too far away and right now I got to figure out how we can possibly do it. Money is not the issue because we offered them $13,000 to their base salary,” Dean said Monday. “In anybody’s world, that’s a lot of money.”
Ryan Tietgen, president of IAFF 4069, said the union doesn’t want to give up two benefits in the current contract. The first is that senior employees would still get first choice of station assignments and the second is sick leave would continue to count as hours worked for overtime.
Tietjen said he called Department of Public Safety Director Mitch Harrell but Harrell hasn’t heard anything from the county and he sent emails to Dean and county labor attorney Wayne Helsby to ask for the status of negotiations but hasn’t heard back from them.
He was asked why the union hasn’t voted to accept the big raise.
“We didn’t turn down the big raise. There are some other things they want to take out of there that we’re not willing to give up,” Tietjen said. “We’re just waiting to hear back from them on what their rebuttal is.”
The county has shut down one of its seven ambulances serving Fanning Springs due to staff shortages and it shut a second ambulance in Morriston Monday, but the ambulance is back in service.
Tietjen was asked if the union would consider giving ground on either of the two issues in dispute.
“I don’t know. They haven’t come back with an offer. Once they come back, maybe it will be good or they may so no, you can have this. Right now, it’s in their court,” Tietjen said.
Dean pointed out that the union contract won’t expire for another 8 ½ to 9 months, which means there is time to come to an agreement. He said the staff shortages that sidelined one ambulance are common throughout the industry.
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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt January 10, 2022; Posted January 10, 2022
