Sunday Commentary: Just No Pleasing the Firefighters’ Union

Trauernicht-Nathan

The city of Davis’ staff report buried the lead when it recommended toward the end the immediate hiring of UC Davis Fire Chief Nathan Trauernicht as the new fire chief for both the city of Davis and UC Davis.

Staff notes that UC Davis would be receptive to implementing the “shared management oversight prior to finalizing a Joint Powers Agreement.”

“This would address the concerns of the Davis Firefighters relative to a Fire Service Professional overseeing Davis Fire Department operations,” the city noted, with the recommendation being that the “current Fire Chief for UC Davis has successfully qualified to be the next Fire Chief for the City of Davis.”

For months, the Davis firefighters have been complaining – loudly and in public – about the current situation where Davis is utilizing Police Chief Landy Black and Assistant Chief Steve Pierce as the administrative heads of the fire department while using the Division Chiefs as the operational heads.

The union, in calling for a permanent full-time chief, have taken a no-confidence vote in the interim Chiefs Black and Pierce.

“For the reasons specified above, and general discontent with Chiefs who do not possess any experience in fire service, morale within the Fire Department is at an all time low, and line personnel have lost trust in Chiefs Black and Pierce,” Union President Bobby Weist wrote this summer.

Given all of that, one would think that the union would be pleased with the recommendation to put a full-time fire chief in place.  But, of course, that is not the case.

Bobby Weist made his dislike for the entire process known in an interview with Tom Sakash of the Davis Enterprise.  He told the paper that they are “not yet sold on the shared-management plan.”

He prefers the full merger, which is currently impossible due to the disparity in wages and benefits.

Writes Tom Sakash, “Instead, Weist says, under the city’s proposal, the UCD fire chief would be put in the position of working for two different bosses.”

“(Trauernicht would be) working for the university and working for the city of Davis,” Mr. Weist said. “Our policies, or the way we do things, are different than the university’s. They have their policy on how they do things, we have policies on the way we do things.”

“When you work at the Fire Department you have to work as a team. You don’t play on two teams, you play for one team,” he continued. “To me, if we were able to merge the full department, we’d be able to locate stations, we’d have unified training, it would be a united department.”

But that, of course, is not the full story.

We get closer to the truth with a letter from retired Fire Captain Neal Boysen, a 26-year veteran who retired in December 2012.

He writes to the city council in an email forwarded to the Vanguard by several, “It is my personal and professional opinion this is NOT in the best interest of the city of Davis, its citizens or its fire department.”

He complains of a 2010 incident, where there was a huge crash, and that Nate Trauernicht as on-call Duty Chief for both City of Davis and UC Davis was required to show up at the accident, but chose note to.

Mr. Boysen wrote, “As a professional firefighter, this is UNACCEPTABLE. For a Chief Officer, this is a true DERELICTION OF DUTY.”

He continued, “For this reason I do not believe Chief Trauernicht and the JPA are in the best interest of the City of Davis. As a final note… Nate Trauernicht does not have the trust or support of the members of the City of Davis Fire Department.”

Is this story true?  We do not know and will continue to look into it.  A single incident should not define one’s qualification and, at the same time, UC Davis Firefighters President Joe Newman of Local 4920 had nothing but good things to say about their chief.

He wrote to the city, “In 2010 when Nate Trauernicht was appointed Fire Chief, of the UC Davis Fire Department, one of the first things he did was to reach out to our Union. He said it was a priority to him to have a collaborative and productive relationship.”

He continued, “As the Union President I’ve worked closely with Chief Trauernicht for the past four years and can say our working relationship is mutually beneficial as we work through common fire service issues as well as contract negotiations.”

Mr. Newman added, “Since working with Chief Trauernicht I’ve witnessed his passion for administration as well his commitment to continually improve the workplace. Technologically speaking the UC Davis Fire Department is strides ahead of where we were a few years ago.”

He wrote, “Seasoned UC Davis Firefighters will say Chief Trauernicht is the best Chief our department has had.”

It seems odd that the union president for UC Davis would be so supportive of Nathan Trauernicht while the Davis firefighters have no confidence in him.

Given his overall track record and support from the firefighters who work under him, we are tempted to read a different interpretation in Captain Boysen’s complaint.

It seems more likely that the truth in this is a power play by the Davis union and they see the merger and the hiring of an outside chief as a threat to their power base that they have enjoyed for years.

I believe that Bobby Weist and his union do not want Chief Trauernicht because they know he is not someone that they can control.

But Mr. Weist and his members have been asking for a full-time chief, and the city has found one that is completely qualified and acceptable – and now they do not want him.  As always, they have miscalculated because they failed to be careful of what they asked for, apparently believing that they would not get it.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

About The Author

David Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

Related posts

17 Comments

  1. Davis Progressive

    pretty funny so the davis firefighters don’t like the idea of a permanent chief they don’t think they can control, but the ucd union loves him and thinks he’s been their best chief. boy this is a tough call.

  2. Frankly

    The firefighters union operates as a private cartel, but with public funding and public political protection.

    It is quite absurd in this day of unsustainable city budgets and insufficient employment opportunities that the Davis firefighters union even feels justified in demanding status quo. But they do. In fact, they feel justified in going to that next step asking for more.

    To be fair, they are not the only union to exploit their legal wage extortion capability. For example, the BART employees union is doing the same at this time. The difference is the clear differentiation in the amount of total compensation we are paying for our unionized Davis firefighters vs. almost all other public sector employees… especially teachers and police.

    I have nothing personal against the average Davis firefighter. They are a collection of good people doing an important job. The problem is their union. More specifically the problem is their unionization.

    We really screwed up allowing public sector employees the ability to unionize. From a voter perspective, the practice pits us against each other for determining spending priorities: but with the unionized voter having a tremendous unfair advantage. From a business perspective, the unionized public sector business already enjoys a monopoly.

    It is absurd; but most people will find the suggestion that we outlaw public sector unionization as absurd because it is so much the historical practice. It will take a progressive realization of the contributing fiscal damage for the populous to begin to demand that we do away with public sector unions once and for all, and instead leverage all employment laws, regulations and best-practices to ensure ALL our public sector employees are adequately compensated and fairly treated.

  3. Davis Progressive

    full disclosure: i have been a member of a public employee union most of my adult life. only in the last half dozen years have i moved to a point where i’m no longer unionized.

    unions have important purposes particularly in government where other methods of redress would be difficult.

    the problem is when the union becomes too powerful and controls the very people that are supposed to check their power.

    so what is the answer? it’s not to ban the union, which has become a political force because of the democrats near monopoly on control. it’s for republicans to embrace their basic core principles of the right to unionize, end the threat of decertification and right to work, and bring more parity into the process. the irony there is it would actually act to decrease union power.

    how are you going to ban unions when the attempts actually make them stronger and better organized?

    what is different about davis is that the political establishment – at least a critical sector – have recognized the destructive power of the firefighters union and have turned on them.

    the firefighters have responded by digging in, which is actually contributing to their demise. had they simply compromised from the start, they would have maintained their credibility. now other than a few true believers like mr. toad and opportunistic politicians like yamada and provenza, it’s hard to find anyone in the know who supports their efforts.

  4. medwoman

    Frankly

    “It is absurd; but most people will find the suggestion that we outlaw public sector unionization as absurd because it is so much the historical practice. It will take a progressive realization of the contributing fiscal damage for the populous to begin to demand that we do away with public sector unions once and for all, and instead leverage all employment laws, regulations and best-practices to ensure ALL our public sector employees are adequately compensated and fairly treated.”

    It is interesting to me that you wish to solve a complex problem with a ” once and for all” ban on a given type of activity engaged in by citizens for their own perceived benefit, while abhorring ” bans” when you believe it is individual rights that are being abrogated. While I certainly agree that the union of the Davis firefighters has taken some unreasonable and untenable positions and that the city is right in using any legal and ethical measures to reign them in for these specific actions, I certainly do not agree that these actions by a few should be used as justification for banning the rights of all public workers to form unions.

  5. Frankly

    Most people don’t know that the Wagner Act of 1935 was specifically for private sector employees to be given the right to organize for collective bargaining; and even FDR was agaist allowing public sector employees to do the same, saying: [quote]“It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”[/quote]
    The founders of unionization viewed unions as a method to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”

    The idea of pubic sector unions was considerd absurd. It was. It is.

    It is only the fact that we have gotten used to this absurdity that allows them to continue to function.

    The idiocy in the average voters is that they damage themsleves with their support of public sector unionization. They generally emotionally connect themselves to labor and hence respond negatively when unions are challenged… even when those union members are far over compensated and that compesation impacts education and other essential government programs having to be decreased and cut.

    Absurd is the word.

  6. Growth Izzue

    [quote]The idiocy in the average voters is that they damage themsleves with their support of public sector unionization. They generally emotionally connect themselves to labor and hence respond negatively when unions are challenged… even when those union members are far over compensated and that compesation impacts education and other essential government programs having to be decreased and cut.
    [/quote]

    Here’s where we’re heading.

    [url]http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/11/usa-pensions-sanjose-idUSL2N0H700V20130911[/url]

  7. Davis Progressive

    my problem here is that by focusing on all public employee unions, you are in effect letting the bad behavior of the union in question off the hook

  8. Growth Izzue

    I agree DP, but believe me, this union is it’s own worst enemy. Let them keep it up because in my opinion they’re making it easier for the council and Pinkerton to get what they need as I’m sure the union has lost much of whatever good public sentiment they had left.

  9. medwoman

    Frankly

    “Government workers, however, don’t generate profits.”

    They may not “generate profits” in the limited sense in which you are using the words. However, I would argue that they definitely generate value.
    On a local level, the firefighters are generating value if they save a house from burning down, or save someone’s life. At the national level we have workers at the CDC who ” generate value” in helping to prevent epidemics and maintain a healthy food supply. At the state level, we have all of the workers who make our UCD system possibly including what is arguably one of the top veterinary schools in the country and the UCD medical school which has been a leader in primary care and preventive medicine.

    I do not agree with your premise that because one builds a career within a government entity , they should give up the right to organize which is guaranteed to private sector employees.

  10. Mr.Toad

    “now other than a few true believers like mr. toad”

    Now this is interesting because I didn’t know I was a true believer. Maybe I need to clarify. I sometimes respond to David’s ad nauseam attacks on Weist as over the top, vindictive or claim David is on a vendetta. David, by the way, has never denied my claims. That doesn’t mean I support everything the firefighters do. On the issue of this JPA I asked if it would save money over the long term. Nobody responded to that question. I think it should be one of the two questions that need to be considered, the other being if emergency services will be enhanced. I think its clear from the boundary drop that the elected officials who have looked at this think consolidation is a good idea. So that leaves the financing as the only remaining question I have. Still it is possible for you to alienate me with your scurrilous attacks, so its your choice, engage in an honest discussion or attack me without understanding my position.

  11. B. Nice

    [quote]how are you going to ban unions when the attempts actually make them stronger and better organized?
    [/quote]

    This is a good point, when people or groups feel threatened and attacked it’s easier to motivate their members.

  12. SouthofDavis

    Davis Progressive wrote:

    > people have freedom to associate in this country.

    But people in this country don’t have the “freedom” to not give unions their money if they work for a union firm, city or fire department…

  13. SouthofDavis

    I wrote:

    > people in this country don’t have the “freedom”
    > to not give unions their money if they work for
    > a union firm, city or fire department…

    Then Davis Progressive

    > for the most part they do.

    I don’t know of ANY union shop, unionized city or fire department where a employee can wish the union well and tell them that they don’t want to give them ANY money.

    > also, the non-union members don’t have to negotiate
    > their own contracts and they get all of the benefits
    > of union membership. so it goes both ways.

    The problem is that a hard working guy can’t negotiate his own BETTER deal so slackers get the “benefits” of the union and hard workers are pulling all the weight and not getting a penny more (and in the end usually get burnt out like at so many inner city schools and the DMV)…

  14. Mr.Toad

    I once worked with a guy who didn’t belong to the union and always complained about paying his less than full member dues until he had a problem at work and went running to the union for help.

Leave a Reply

X Close

Newsletter Sign-Up

X Close

Monthly Subscriber Sign-Up

Enter the maximum amount you want to pay each month
$ USD
Sign up for