Mayor for a New America (20 page)

Ahead of the 2004 negotiations, the union played hardball. BPPA President Tom Nee promised that six-member squads of off-duty officers would follow me to all events. For parades, the contingent would be tripled. I increased my personal security just in case. A hell of a note: on-duty police protecting the mayor from their off-duty brothers.

But it gets worse. Any BPPA member who refused to picket me, Nee announced, would lose dental coverage, life insurance, the right to legal services, and other benefits. Who was this threat aimed at? Nee said at slackers. I had my doubts. What cop, I wondered, wouldn't picket me? I could think of only one—Officer Thomas M. Menino Jr. Was the union pressuring him to picket his father?

Picketing policemen cursed me. Picketing firemen spat on Angela. Fire was that much worse than police.

 

We die for you.

—Captain John J. McKenna of the Boston Fire Department in an August 2002 letter to the editor of the Boston Globe

 

Captain McKenna continued: “Now men and women who are willing to die for you are often unable to articulate the reasons why they undertake these risks for you except for their strong sense of duty. . . . Our strong points aren't community relations.”

Give me a break! Try negotiating with a union whose members die for you. Above the windows of Memorial Hall at BFD headquarters were two rows of photographs of firefighters killed in the line of duty. They extended around the room. People have mixed feelings about cops. Not about firefighters. Community heroes don't need “community relations.”

Policemen and firefighters can't strike. The Boston Police Strike of 1919 settled that. “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time,” Governor Calvin Coolidge declared. He called out the National Guard to police the lawless streets and fired the striking cops.

Police and firefighters can't strike, but they can act like strikers—picketing, demonstrating, leafleting—to sway public opinion and move officials to agree to their demands. Making mayors squirm is smart tactics. In good economic times, mayors tend to yield. In bad times, that often means they'll have to make layoffs in other city departments. Take 2010. To pay for the 19 percent raise (later reduced by the City Council) awarded the firefighters by a state arbitration panel, I laid off 250 workers, closed four libraries, and pulled staff out of community health centers.

The economy runs in cycles. Suppose a mayor is generous to fire in an upswing. Then has to negotiate a new contract with the police in a downswing. Police will demand parity with fire. That is the dilemma I sowed with the firefighters' contract I signed in 2001. Police fell behind fire and stayed there. A decade later, the average patrolman's base pay was $15,000 less than a firefighter's. (Though if you include overtime and details, police earned the same as firefighters.) Police leaped ahead in 2013 when a state arbitration panel awarded them a 25.4 percent raise over six years. To my disappointment, the City Council unanimously approved that unaffordable raise. “We're going to have to brace ourselves for the firefighters,” a city councilor said. “They may use the same argument.” Right, parity. He should have thought of that before voting yes.

 

I noticed a difference between the public safety unions on the picket line. Despite their higher pay, firefighters tend to be angrier. Policing is a more stable profession than firefighting. Human nature being what it is, criminals will never be in short supply, and cities will need police to handle them. But with fewer fires, we will need fewer firefighters. Welcome news, but not for them.

Increasingly, firefighters don't fight fires. They respond to emergencies. In 2012, 60 percent of the 72,000 calls received by the BFD were for medical and other emergency services; 8 percent were for fires. Major fires fell from 417 in 1975 to 40 in 2012—a 90 percent decline. Yet the number of firefighters in Boston declined only 12.5 percent, from 1,600 in the 1980s to 1,400 today.

The national picture is similar. Stricter enforcement of building codes, fireproof construction materials, smoke alarms, sprinkler systems, and the fall in the number of smokers have made cities safer. Of the 30 million calls made to fire departments in 2011, only 1.4 million were fire-related—down 50 percent since 1981. Yet the number of firefighters per capita has not changed in decades. “We've got a small army of firemen out there and no fires,” writes one expert.

For its army Boston pays $185 million a year. Money well spent, you say. Reviving a man in cardiac arrest with a defibrillator is as much lifesaving work as rescuing a child from a burning house with a ladder. Somebody has to do it. Agreed. But does it have to be a firefighter?

Because fire stations are spread across the city, firefighters are often the first to arrive at an emergency. But in about a third of calls, as soon as the ambulance shows up, the firefighters turn things over to Emergency Medical Service workers.

Reviewing such evidence, Toronto in 2012 stopped dispatching firefighters to nearly fifty types of medical emergencies they used to respond to along with ambulances. Toronto firefighters claim the public is less safe; but stricken people are not being left to die on the streets. They are being treated by EMS workers. They have the same medical training as firefighters, but their benefits package—wages, health care, pensions—is lighter.

Boston could follow Toronto and free resources from fire to fund education and crime prevention. Or Boston could follow New York and Washington and combine fire and EMS in one department, with fewer fire trucks and more ambulances.

Big change like that awaits Boston's next fiscal crisis, when necessity may force decision. But to any future mayor seeking to adjust the ratio of firefighters to fires, good luck. You'll need it.

The firefighters' union fought me at every turn, and usually won. Firefighters were always admired, but 9/11 made them national icons. I was mayor during two recessions, and I laid off hundreds of city workers. But I didn't dare touch the BFD's budget. The issue was never how much to cut but how much more to spend.

More progress was made in changing the culture of the firehouse. The St. Clair Commission of the Fire Department was the O'Toole Commission. I accepted salary increases higher than the city could afford, and the Fire Department accepted more women and minority firefighters. I traded money for diversity.

 

150
YEARS UNIMPEDED BY PROGRESS
. So boasted a banner carried by Chicago firefighters. It could be the motto of the Boston Fire Department. Listen to what a young firefighter told the O'Toole Commission: “Tradition is an anchor around our necks. Our fear of change is killing us.”

In a department with roots in the eighteenth century, tradition dictated that firefighters were men. So in 2000, out of a force of 1,592 there were twelve women firefighters (something I called “outrageous”). None of the twelve held rank. When, in a deposition before the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, a district fire chief was asked why he had not promoted a qualified female firefighter, he replied, “Because people didn't like her, and I think it should be a man's job.”

Some of the twelve women firefighters were treated well. Others were not. A woman assigned to the East Boston firehouse testified that her pillow was urinated on, marijuana was planted in her fire coat pocket, and she was physically threatened. When her fire gloves were stolen, she protested to her superior. He took action, telling his men to cut it out. For this, he said in a discrimination suit, headquarters ordered him to see a psychiatrist.

Tradition dictated that the Boston Fire Department was an exclusive club for Irish American men who rode fire engines with shamrocks on the doors. So in 2000, the percentage of minorities selected as superior officers stood at 3 percent. In Paul Evans's Police Department, five times more minorities held rank.

Following a wave of lawsuits against the BFD triggered by media exposés, I appointed a special commission of officials and academics led by former state public safety secretary Kathleen O'Toole, one of the four finalists on my list for police commissioner in 1994. Its fifty-eight-page report called for “radical changes to the command structure, promotional system, and department culture.”

The O'Toole Commission made sixty-six recommendations, many aimed at easing gender and racial tensions. Some I could introduce myself. Others—curbing abuses in sick leave, ending the practice of working twenty-four-hour shifts, and introducing drug testing—had to be negotiated with the union.

After negotiations stalled in December 2000, the firefighters turned up the heat. They demonstrated at my Christmas tree lighting ceremony, picketed me at a National League of Cities conference in Boston, and slapped a
GRINCH
bumper sticker on my Ford Expedition. Then came an X-rated shout-fest at my State of the City address in January.

People arriving at John Hancock Hall were met by 2,200 picketers, including firefighters from across the state. A flying wedge of helmeted cops led my family and me through a side door. The crowd shouted “Shame on you!” and goons spat on Angela. My parks commissioner, Justine Liff, and a group of her co-workers got the same treatment.

“I've been around a long, long time, and never do I remember anything like this happening,” remarked former city councilor Richard Iannella. “This is the mayor's address to the people. In my view it's shameful.”

The union had put out the word to boycott the speech. We were afraid of rows of empty seats showing up on the eleven o'clock news. So we packed the hall with rank-and-file city workers. From their applause you'd think their jobs depended on it.

I never had any trouble with protesting police but nearly squared off with an angry firefighter. It happened in a Dorchester playground and of all things at a coffee hour for mothers. The guy wagged a finger in my face and told me what I could do with my contract. I was about to forget myself when a mom pushed in between us, put a finger in
his
face, and lit into him. I treasure the memory: The feisty mom was my daughter Susan.

The city offered a 13.8 percent pay raise over three years. The union held out for 20 percent. But the real stumbling block was one of the O'Toole recommendations.

The union fought to preserve a perk singled out by the commission: Because a grateful Commonwealth exempted them from paying state income taxes, injured firefighters on leave were paid more than their regular salaries. Injuries in the BFD were three times higher than in the BPD. A cynic—or an economist—might conclude that firefighters had an incentive to be injured. Boston taxpayers paid twice as much per capita for fire protection as taxpayers in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, or Minneapolis. High injury rates were a big reason why.

I wanted (1) independent medical examiners to assess firefighters' capacity to return to work, and (2) management to be able to assign light duty to firefighters coming off injuries.

This demand, along with requirements to hire more women and promote more minorities, seemed fair to me. Not to the city councilors who boycotted my speech. Councilor Peggy Davis-Mullen spoke for them when she told reporters that what the firefighters wanted, they deserved to get.

They got a raise and the city won some concessions on the O'Toole issues. The terms of the contract were agreed to in the last days of August 2001. Two weeks before 9/11.

I lucked out on the timing. After 9/11, I couldn't have denied anything to our firefighters—not with Boston's firehouses draped in black bunting for their 340 New York colleagues killed at the Twin Towers. And especially in an election year. Davis-Mullen was my opponent. She'd hoped to exploit the union's anger at me over the contract. Settling the contract settled her fate.

 

QUESTION FROM A REPORTER
: Is it true, Mayor Menino, that you slammed down the phone on John Kerry Saturday?

ANSWER
: I did not. . . . Not on Saturday.

 

I'd had labor trouble with police. I'd had labor trouble with firefighters. But not at the same time. The year 2004 brought a perfect storm: trouble with police
and
fire. At the worst possible moment: when Boston was hosting the Democratic National Convention (DNC), with a Boston resident, Senator John F. Kerry, as the party's presidential nominee.

The police union was threatening to picket the convention site, the FleetCenter, home of the Celtics and Bruins. And delegations from big states like California and Ohio put me on notice: They would not cross a picket line.

The convention was Boston's chance to shine in the national spotlight. It was my chance, before an audience of fifteen thousand journalists, to show my stuff as a
Governing
magazine “Mayor of the Year,” the “urban mechanic” with his wrench on the nuts and bolts of making things work.

Now, in June, a month before the convention, things weren't working. I couldn't turn on the radio without hearing my competence mocked in a Harry and Louise ad, “Cake,” paid for by the police union.

 

FEMALE VOICE
: It's only a month away, and it seems this DNC is going to be the mayor's big party. I sure hope Menino is fixing all the problems.

MALE VOICE
: I don't know. There's gonna be the usual protesters, I'm sure, but now it seems that even our city workers will be protesting. With thousands of city workers still without contracts, it doesn't seem like Menino has things under control at all.

FEMALE
: He says he's a friend of labor, but what I don't understand is that he hasn't signed a contract with our police in close to three years. . . . [I]t seems that he's not only insulting labor, but threatening our public safety.