Firefighters in Saint John have a new five year contract following the delivery of an arbitration board ruling on Wednesday.
The president of the Saint John Firefighters’ Association Peter Alexander has confirmed that for CHSJ News and says they’ll see wage increases of a little less than 3-percent over five years retroactive to 2015.
“The old saying goes, you probably got a fair deal if both parties feel like they’ve got something but both parties feel like they’ve lost something. I think like that’s the case of today,” says Alexander.
“I don’t see or agree with anyone agreeing that the situation or the arbitration system is broken. It is absolutely not.”
Alexander says that this is the longest contract they’ve ever worked under which he says something the city wanted and says the city also made achievements when it comes to cost-sharing on LTD benefit of 75-25, and concessions of the new pension plan.
“The cost sharing…that is a roll-back in a sense of whatever numbers we’ve achieved for a wage-increase that constitutes almost a percentage of that wage increase, so it’s not a small thing that we’ve lost that,” says Alexander.
