Brothers and Sisters,

I wanted to give you all an update on various issues the Local is working on. As you are aware the FLRA has mandated a consolidation of ALL IAFF locals within the Region.  With that, Local F33 has been working very closely with the affected IAFF affiliates and the 16^th District Vice President to prepare for this consolidation. I can’t say much, other than impasse was declared and recently the parties met via conference call with the mediation impasse panel. Without going into specifics, after two and a half hours the parties agreed to proceed with another form of mediation, which will be supervised by the impasse panel. The Memberships patience and trust during this tedious process has been incredible! And we thank you all for your support. We expect mediation to go well and to have a tentative start date for negotiations soon and will keep you all apprised as the process’ slowly creep along.

On a more positive note, the IAFF Legislative Conference, held last month was a success. The IAFF has introduced more Federal Firefighter Legislation than ever! Most were perceived as minor, administrative fixes that garnered bi-partisan support during our lobbying. The more technical, read “costly” bills, also received unprecedented support from the California Congressional delegation and we hope to be able to report some very exciting news soon!

Here locally, the new schedule continues to improve, as tweaks and changes are made to many of the unintended and unanticipated consequences. Thank you all for your patience and more importantly, your suggestions and solutions! For quite some time the Local has been engaged in negotiating a MOU to allow shopping at commercial facilities while on duty. This has now become a priority given our new schedule and the necessity of our members to work multiple days. This is also directly tied to a proposed wellness fitness program. The IAFF/IAFC wellness fitness initiative has been proposed to management and will likely be put to committee for exploration and recommendations. Labor and Management also have a NFPA 1500 committee that was recently started and the Local is hopeful that many of the fundamental shortcomings of our Agency will be identified and solutions will be proposed for adoption/implementation. Thanks to recent direction and guidance from the Obama administration, as well as our current contract, Local F33 has reinvigorated the “Partnership Process”.  Labor and Management will soon meet and attempt to resolve longstanding issues affecting all of us. One key area we have identified is dispatch; Local F33 is committed to offering real solutions to a system that is, in our opinion broken at best and downright dangerous at worst! We will do everything in our power to keep our members and the public we are sworn to protect SAFE!

STAY STRONG, STAY PROUD, STAY UNION!