A pay raise might not be enough to fix Bangor’s firefighter shortage
The Bangor firefighter union signed a new agreement with the city that will slightly raise wages for the department, but first responders worry the boost won’t be enough to retain firefighters.
The new “bridge” agreement, which passed by a 47-21 vote on Saturday, will give firefighters a five percent pay raise. It’s designed to hold the department over until the union begins negotiations for its new contract with the city in April 2024.
“I don’t think it’s going to work at all because it’s not moving the mark up enough,” said Jared Willey, a Bangor firefighter and president of Local 772 of the International Association of Firefighters. “We don’t want to sound unappreciative, but we want to fix this problem and five percent isn’t going to fix it. We need a 20 to 30 percent wage adjustment to become competitive and retain people.”
The agreement comes three months after firefighters begged Bangor city councilors to approve the union’s request for $817,000 in pandemic relief funding to provide bonuses to first responders. The union hoped the money, which would roughly equal two $3,000 payments for each employee, would help recruit and retain firefighters, but the city ultimately denied the request.
The five percent increase will take the department’s entry-level hourly pay from about $19 to a little more than $20, but isn’t enough to compete with other departments throughout the state. This puts the department in a perpetually short-staffed situation that is both stressful for first responders and could limit how well stations can respond to emergencies.
Last year, Bangor’s pay for firefighters was lower than between 60 and 70 percent of departments throughout the state, Willey said. The best-paying departments in the state offer an entry-level hourly rate of more than $30.
Since then, many firefighters have left Bangor to join other departments, begin new careers or retire, but Bangor hasn’t been able to hire enough firefighters in their place.
“We’re trying our best to hold ourselves together, but there’s no drive anymore,” Willey said. “We’re always going to be there for the citizens, but in between calls is when we’re struggling.
“Every single person in this department has thought about leaving, going to a different department or starting a new career.”
The department had 73 employees across four stations as of Monday, Willey said. This means each station usually has about 18 people on duty, which the department considers “minimum manning” to safely respond to calls. If a station has just one or two people call out sick or take a vacation, the smaller crew may not be able to operate its equipment properly.
“The fewer firefighters we have, the more it impacts the firefighters themselves and the safety of the crew and victims in a fire,” Willey said. “If you have someone trapped in a burning building and we show up with minimum manning, that means we have four people who go to work saving that victim while the other two operate the truck. If you’re trapped in a home, would you rather have four people come get you or 10?”
To be fully staffed, each of Bangor’s four stations needs a crew of 21 first responders, totalling 84 firefighters. The department also needs two inspectors, a mechanic and an education officer, which brings the employee total to 88.
The department has 10 job openings for firefighters, Willey said. Another 11 members are still employed at the department, but aren’t coming to work for reasons such as being on family medical leave or having a long-term illness or injury.
“As quick as we’re hiring people, we’re losing them,” Willey said. “We added three people to shifts and we’ve already lost that many people in the time it took to hire and train those three new people.”
The firefighters that have left Bangor for other departments most commonly go to Bucksport, Ellsworth and Hampden, which all offer higher hourly wages with lower call volumes.
Working at a department with a lower call volume is particularly attractive to the new generation of firefighters, Willey said, as they’re interested in maintaining a work-life balance that allows them to spend more time with their families.
This is different from older generations that entered the career for the adrenaline rush that comes with fighting large fires and helping people who have been in serious car crashes.
“You get beat up in Bangor because it’s extremely busy and the clientele we serve is different,” Willey said. “We have a large unhoused population that brings different dynamics to the city that we respond to.”
While Bangor has welcomed many new, young firefighters who need to be trained, Willey said the new recruits haven’t been able to fill the expertise gap left after a wave of retirements in recent — which firefighters call the “silver tsunami.”
“We need people who come from experience,” Willey said. “We lost a huge amount of talent, which we’re replacing with brand new firemen. Public service isn’t very attractive anymore to someone coming out of high school, so we have to recruit from other departments.”