Unions Call for End to Taxpayer-funded Attacks on Houston Fire Fighter Collective Bargaining

This week, the Houston City Council will reconsider Item 34 from the 8/23/23 City Council Agenda. The item would commit an additional $468,500.00 in City of Houston tax dollars to attacking the right of the Houston Fire Fighters to collectively bargain.

Houston’s unions stand fully and completely behind the efforts of Houston Fire Fighters Association Local 341 to advocate for workplace safety, fairness on the job, a living wage, and for the general welfare of the membership they represent.

For six long years a bargaining impasse between the Houston Fire Fighters Association and City of Houston has left Houston Fire Fighters with sub-par salaries and benefits, undermining employee morale and damaging the City’s attempts to recruit and retain the public safety workforce residents depend on.

Instead, the City of Houston has spent millions of dollars seeking to declare unconstitutional a provision of state law granting collective bargaining rights to Fire Fighters and Police Officers. This effort threatened the collective bargaining rights, wages, and benefits not just of IAFF Local 341, but also of public safety professionals across the State of Texas.

The labor movement has consistently called on the City to take steps to resolve the conflict and abandon its legal threat to public employees’ collective bargaining rights, making our position clear in April 2019, December 2019, and September 2020 letters to Mayor Turner and City Council.

This issue was settled earlier this year when the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of IAFF Local 341, declaring that the City of Houston violated state law by refusing to submit to state law’s provisions to resolve its contract dispute with Local 341.

Then this year the Texas legislature overwhelmingly passed Senate Bill 736 with strong bipartisan support in both houses. SB 736 mandates binding arbitration, managed by an independent third party, when collective bargaining between Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association (HPFFA) Local 341 and the City of Houston fails to reach an agreement. Under the terms of the law, a three-member panel of arbitrators — one picked by the city, one by the firefighters’ union and one agreed to by both parties — would yield a one-year contract while negotiations could continue toward a longer-term agreement. We and the Texas AFL-CIO strongly supported the bill to finally resolve this dispute.

Allowing this dispute to continue to fester is not in the City’s interest and it is not in the interest of the working people of Houston and of this state. Instead of further wasting taxpayer funds challenging the constitutionality of Fire Fighters’ collective bargaining rights, the City should put this conflict to rest by proceeding expeditiously to arbitration, as required by SB 736.

The 95 unions of the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation ask Houston City Council to vote against further funding of legal challenges to Fire Fighters’ collective bargaining rights and support SB 736’ mandate to use arbitration to resolve this contract dispute with the City of Houston.

This letter was sent individually to all 16 members of Houston City Council. If you would like to express your opposition to taxpayer-funded attacks on collective bargaining, sign up to speak during public comment next Tuesday at 2pm or contact your city councilmember directly.