Bangor, firefighters to negotiate new contract

BANGOR – Negotiators for the city and for Bangor firefighters are expected to meet with a mediator today to help resolve stalled contract talks that have left firefighters working without a new contract for more than a year.

The Bangor firefighters, represented by the International Association of Firefighters, Local 772, are the last unresolved contract of the city’s three bargaining units, with contracts that expired June 30, 2005. Two units representing ramp, weather observer and dispatch employees at Bangor International Airport settled late last year, a city official said Wednesday.

A contract between the city and the union, which represents 87 members, mostly firefighters but also captains, lieutenants, a mechanic and two fire inspectors, has not come as easily.

Neither side is specifically commenting on what the sticking points are. Earlier this year, however, a union official identified pay rates and insurance as the main unresolved issues.

In keeping with the contract ground rules, Assistant City Manager Bob Farrar would not comment Wednesday on any remaining issues.

“Typically we don’t talk about that,” he said.

Ron Green Jr., Local 772 president, said on Tuesday that he could not comment on what had caused negotiations to stall and prompt the intervention of a mediator.

The contracts for the two units that settled negotiations last year included provisions for pay increases of 2 percent in each of the first two years and 3 percent in the third year, Farrar said. Seven other bargaining units, including the police, have contracts that expire on June 30, 2007.

While not the norm, protracted contract deliberations have occurred, said Farrar, who was part of a marathon negotiations with firefighters that was settled in 1997, more than four years after their contract expired. The issues were resolved on the eve of arbitration, Farrar said.

Arbitration is the last stop in a lengthy process that begins when a mediator is brought in as a neutral party to try to bring both parties together on the issues. If that fails, the stalled negotiations go to fact finding, where each side presents their positions to a three-member panel that makes nonbinding recommendations, Farrar said.

The findings serve as a springboard for more discussions, he said.

Should the two sides remain at an impasse, as the negotiations found in the mid 1990s, the matter goes to arbitration, in which a panel hears the case and makes binding decisions, except on wages, pensions and health insurance, Farrar said.