Glendale Firefighters Face a Year’s Pay Freeze : Budget: Other city employees, who have already had their turns at a 0% increase, will get salary hikes this time.

While city administrators and managers are set to receive their biggest pay hike since 1992, city firefighters have agreed to accept a new three-year contract that contains no raise this year and only minimal increases for the next two years, officials said Wednesday.

Under agreements approved by the City Council Tuesday night, the city’s 18 department heads and about 250 middle managers will receive 3% cost-of-living increases. Some whose salaries have fallen below the market average will also get an “inequity adjustment,” boosting their raises to as high as 10%.

But the 140 members of the Glendale Firefighters Assn. will get no salary increase this year and a maximum 2% raise in 1996 and 3% in 1997.

“We’re very disappointed,” said Jack Morrison, president and chairman of the association. “To basically give us a 0% increase, while the police and general employees are getting 1.75% and the managers get 3%, means that the firefighters are paying for that. We don’t agree with it whatsoever.”

During contract negotiations, which lasted several months and concluded last week, the city’s personnel division reportedly was steadfast in its demand that the firefighters accept no increase this year.

Morrison said the firefighters were made to engage in “collective begging, rather than collective bargaining.” He added that the association accepted the pay freeze this year because it had “no alternatives.”

But city officials said that firefighters are merely the last of four employee groups to “share the pain” in a cost-cutting program that began amid budget problems four years ago and in which management, police officers and members of the general employee associations have all foregone pay raises for one year.

“To steer us back in the right direction, part of the strategy was to deal with the compensation issue,” City Manager David Ramsay said. “It was our hope that along the way, each of the groups would take a zero.”

The city’s administrators and managers agreed to a zero pay increase in 1993 to assist in cost-cutting, and they took an increase of just 1% last year. Their newly approved salary adjustments are aimed at paying them back for making the sacrifice and at making their salaries more competitive with those offered by other cities, officials said.

Under the agreements approved Tuesday, some of the biggest pay increases will go to some of the city’s highest-paid employees.

In addition to 3% cost-of-living increases, the city manager, assistant city manager, city attorney, city clerk, city treasurer, housing director, library director and personnel director will get 5% raises.

The finance director, public service director and fire chief will get raises ranging from 2% to 4% on top of the 3% increase, according to city documents.

City officials said the raises are possible partly because Glendale’s efforts to cut costs were paying off--a fact that makes the firefighters’ contract hard to swallow, Morrison said.

Cost-cutting efforts included the elimination of nearly 200 full-time jobs that had not been filled.

“We are showing some positive signs, but it’s premature to say whether the recovery is permanent or not,” said Jack Hoffman, the city’s personnel director. “We have a plan for economic recovery, but it is not a short-term process.”