A news article this morning noted that the amount of money the City of Pittsburgh is paying for overtime in the Fire Bureau (in the Public Safety Department) is decreasing from where it stood a few years ago. In terms of dollars budgeted for “premium pay”–which is one of six subcategories of expenditure under Personnel-Salaries and Wages in the bureau–the 2013 actual expenditure was $17.8 million (about 31 cents per $1 dollar of total salaries and wages. This year the budget for premium pay is $15.2 million and for 2018 the budgeted expenditure is slated at $14.9 million.
A longer historical look at the ratio of premium pay to salaries in the Fire Bureau back to 2000 shows highpoints in 2006 of 0.37/1 (this followed separations and retirements in the Bureau due to a change in retiree health care in 2005) and in 2014 of 0.41/1; most other years in the prior to 2014 were in the .20-.29 range, and since then in the mid to high .30s.
As we noted in a 2014 Brief on the Port Authority and its overtime issues “The hefty use of overtime might make good business sense for very short periods when there is an expectation of an increase in revenue that would enable more hiring or when qualified applicants are not readily available”. However, the additional complication of overtime in public sector work, specifically in the City of Pittsburgh, and even more specifically to the Fire Bureau, is that firefighters are the only collective bargaining unit that can count overtime into pensions, which leads to a practice of working as much as possible in the final years when pensions are calculated, known as spiking.
The Mayor wanted to see an end to this practice, and it was called for by the Act 47 recovery team, but the 2015 contract between the two parties kept the overtime provision and minimum staffing levels. Additionally, a 2013 lawsuit by fire captains and deputy chiefs affected premium pay totals, and at the same time the City’s overseers said the number of firefighters would likely have to rise from what had been budgeted.
