New Orleans Mayor Cantrell’s administration has implemented a furlough plan so that employees will take six days off between now and the end of the year, equating to about a 10% reduction in pay for the last quarter of 2020. In order to do so, they had to secure a waiver from the Civil Service Commission’s 30 day notice rules, and a lot of employees are upset by this lack of notice as they get ready for the holiday season. To discuss what some first responders are feeling about the situation, Newell incited New Orleans Firefighters Union President Aaron Mischler onto the show Friday morning.
“Yesterday’s commission hearing was a little disheartening,” Mischler said. “We had Chip Moore dissenting from the decision, letting them know that this was something that could have been prepared for a lot sooner, had the employees prepared for a lot sooner. On top of that, I was in contact with Mayor Cantrell and Gilbert Mantano just a couple of days ago to let them know I was headed to the State Capitol to talk to the Finance and Appropriations committees, which I did, spoke to the chairs, to possibly put in an amendment to get more money for New Orleans public safety and not have furloughs. It was a positive meeting and it will be on the floor Monday, barring the storm. I conveyed that to them, asked them to hold off for a few days so I could get an answer, and they chose not to listen.”
“What does this mean for you guys operationally?” Newell asked. “To have six days taken out over the next ten weeks?”
“Operationally, there’s no way to avoid houses being closed, stations being out of service. You’re going to have neighborhoods where the fire trucks are shut down,” Mischler said. “They like to play these shell games, where you’ll have some houses that have two firetrucks in them, what we call a pump and a truck, one with the big ladder, and the one that puts the water on the fire. What they'll do is close the pump and say the house is still open - but there’s nobody there that can actually put water on a fire. They’ll come from a few more miles away, which will take a few more minutes to go there, which could be catastrophic to life and safety.”
“Part of the problem is the exacerbation that’s created here because of these shortages you’re having,” Newell continued. “I can’t imagine that issue has been resolved, has it?”
“No, actually,” Mischler answered. “Those issues have not been addressed completely. They’ve hired a class of 24 new firefighters, but we still have fewer people than we had a few months ago. They are trying to address the problem but not fast enough to address the shortages we have. The problem there is that we were having issues back then, they were having an exorbitant amount of overtime to keep enough firefighters on the pumps and in the stations to keep them open. But cutting out overtime altogether is going to bring that number down, and adding furloughs on top of that, you’re going to have to close more houses.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.