Orono Firefighters Win Great Contract With Expanded Wage Scale

The Orono Town Council recently approved a new contract with the Orono Professional Firefighters (IAFF 3106) that includes meaningful raises to compete with other fire departments in Southern Maine. The new contract also fixes and updates a lot of confusing language.

“Both sides worked really well together and I think we had the most amicable and most progressive negotiations with management in a long time. We weren't sure where the town was going to go with wages because under the previous city manager increasing wages had always been a challenge,” said IAFF 3106 President Andrew Brogden. “But we knew that retention and recruitment was a problem and both sides sat down and acknowledged that.”

After the firefighters ratified the contract on May 3, the town manager came back and asked for more concessions. But the firefighters pushed back, pointing out that they had already made some concessions that both sides agreed on. University Grad Workers Union members and other community members attended the Orono Town Council meeting on May 18 to support the firefighters. The only members of the Council who voted against the contract were Councilors Sarah Marx and Matt Powers.

Brogden said the department had previously received a federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grant (SAFER) for three years in a row, but was unable to fulfill the requirements of the grant this year due to staffing challenges related to low wages. The new contract modernizes the old four-step scale to include 20 steps based on seniority. The new scale is more progressive in that it has each individual license and fire officer level built into it.

“The new contract competes not only with other local departments, but also with departments all across the state,” said Brogden. “We're comparable with even Southern Maine departments right now, which is big because in the past, they've always compared us to contracts in Bar Harbor, Old Town or Lincoln.”

But unlike those other towns, the firefighters argued, Orono includes the state’s flagship University, which adds 12,000 students to the 11,000 taxpaying residents during the school year. Brogden also noted that the Orono Fire Department has one of only a few Type 1 regional hazmat teams in the state, covering everywhere from Rockland all the way to Jackman and Madawaska. The team handles all hazards, including weapons of mass destruction.

“We do all hazards, so all hazmat and weapons of mass destruction,” said Brogden. “It's a very specific training and it's a lot of extra work and equipment to upkeep.”

In addition, the new contract adds lateral transfer language that allows the department to bring in experienced firefighters up to step 10, rather than only step two, regardless of experience, as it was in previous contracts.

“If they have 10 years of qualified experience, we can bring them in at level 10 and actually pay people what they're worth,” Brogden said.