Tentative Pact OKd by County, Firefighters : Labor: If ratified, the contract will increase pay about 4% annually. The accord seemingly ends bitter talks that began six months ago.

With a midnight handshake, Ventura County and firefighter union representatives have tentatively agreed to a new contract that would end six months of bitter negotiations.

If ratified by union members and the Board of Supervisors over the next two weeks, the contract reached late Sunday will increase firefighters’ pay about 4% a year, said Ken Maffei, president of the 378-member Ventura County Professional Firefighters’ Assn.

“In these economic times, it’s a fair offer,” Maffei said.

The tentative contract seems to have ended a labor dispute so contentious that the union went to the Board of Supervisors to publicly accuse county officials of mismanagement. Twice the talks reached an impasse.

Contract delays led to a union job action that left helicopter crews shorthanded during the Ventura River flooding on Feb. 12. Also, county officials have said the stalled talks delayed for months the firefighters’ use of electric defibrillators on heart attack victims.

“It’s a shame it didn’t happen sooner,” Supervisor Vicky Howard said Monday. “Certainly, having defibrillators on board (firetrucks) is a life-saving mechanism.”

Firefighters balked at using defibrillators equipped with tape-recording devices last year because they thought that their words could be used against them in lawsuits. But two weeks ago, after the county agreed to strengthen legal protections for emergency workers, the firefighters agreed to use the defibrillators. The county said the tapes were needed as a teaching aid and to keep accurate records.

Defibrillator training for firefighters began Monday, and trucks at all 32 county fire stations should have the electroshock devices by June 1, officials said.

The tentative agreement--reached after seven hours of intense bargaining--includes a stipend of more than $1,250 a year for 340 firefighters expected to receive defibrillator training, Maffei said.

The entire wage package is equal to a 4% hike, up from the 3.1% the county had offered but only about half of the increase the union had sought, Maffei said.

The union president declined to discuss the contract further until firefighters review it at a meeting on Thursday, and then vote on it by secret ballot by the middle of next week. Maffei said the term of the agreement is for between two and three years.

A 4% wage hike would mean that a veteran of firefighter rank would receive a pay increase from $37,692 to about $39,200 a year, not counting overtime. A top scale fire engineer would make about $45,500 a year and a fire captain about $52,000.

Edward McLean, assistant personnel director and the county’s chief negotiator, said the firefighters’ increase is similar to that received in January by 3,200 of the 4,200 employees represented by the county’s largest union, the Public Employees Assn. of Ventura County.

About 800 members of that union received increases of between 8.5% and 9% because they had been at the top end of their pay scale for at least a year, McLean said.

Maffei said even with the 4% increases, Ventura County will be at a competitive disadvantage when trying to keep trained firefighters from jumping to other county fire departments in Southern California.

“This is not going to close the gap with other agencies surrounding us, but it’s at least going to keep us from dropping any further behind,” he said.

Maffei’s statement emphasized the difficulty of recent negotiations, because the county negotiators dispute even basic factual information such as salary comparisons.

Negotiator McLean said again Monday that his survey shows that Ventura County firefighters make between 6% and 8.3% more than the average of other counties in the region.

He said just three firefighters have left Ventura County in the past 18 months. When the county last announced a job opening, he said, 575 applicants responded. “So we feel our salaries are competitive,” McLean said.

Maffei said the negotiations between firefighters and the county were the most adversarial in many years. And he blamed county negotiators who preceded McLean to the table last October.

“What made the atmosphere go bad real quick was that the county entered the negotiations with an attitude that firefighters are a bunch of overpaid sloths that sit around playing checkers all day,” Maffei said. “I think that polarized things.”

McLean laughed off Maffei’s description of initial meetings. He said he does not consider the aggressive exchanges of recent weeks as particularly bitter.

“I’ve been in bitter negotiations and these weren’t bitter,” McLean said. “People get excited at the table. There have been allegations made. But that’s not important because the parties are both pleased and shaking hands and away we go.”

Negotiations with the union representing 575 officers in the Sheriff’s Department will begin in mid-July, McLean said.