01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, July 6, 2006

BY ZACHARY R. MIDER
Journal Staff Writer

CRANSTON -- The city has settled a months-old dispute with the firefighters union by agreeing to hire 15 firefighters this summer, filling most of the Fire Department's roughly two dozen vacant positions.

The union had filed a grievance contending that the low staffing level violated its collective-bargaining agreement. Mayor Stephen P. Laffey's administration insisted the department was overstaffed to begin with.

The settlement, reached early last month while the matter was under arbitration, calls for raising the number of firefighters to about 190. And under a separate deal that has yet to be finalized, the city would pay the new hirees less during their training and put the savings toward the purchase of a new truck.

Despite some bitter disagreements in the past, the two deals prove the city can negotiate with the firefighters union, said Paul G. Grimes, the mayor's director of administration. The city is currently trying to reach a multi-year labor agreement with the union, Local 1363 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, to replace the one that expired Friday.

"We can find common ground," Grimes said.

The firefighters sought the increased staffing because they are sometimes forced to work extra, consecutive shifts when no one volunteers to fill them, said Paul L. Valletta Jr., the union president.

A performance audit that Laffey ordered in 2004 concluded that the department might have dozens more firefighters than it needs. His administration has said it is cheaper to pay fewer firefighters more in overtime rather than make costly health and pension commitments to additional personnel.

The new recruits are slated to start a 16-week training period around Aug. 1, Grimes said.

The second agreement, yet to be ratified by the union or the City Council, would allow the city to buy a truck to refill firefighters' air tanks at a fire scene.

The truck became a priority after cyanide was found in the bloodstreams of several Providence firefighters in March. A subsequent report by a task force there concluded that firefighters should wear air packs more often, to prevent them from inhaling the deadly gas.

Often firefighters don't use air packs in order to preserve the limited amount of pressurized air they have at a fire scene. So the Laffey administration agreed to buy a $200,000 truck that can refill the tanks.

About half the cost of the new truck will be offset by union concessions, Grimes said. The union agreed to give up $69,000 in pay that would have gone to the recruits during their training period, by reducing their weekly salary from $900 to $700, cutting their uniform allowance and not paying them for five holidays, Grimes said. The rest of the savings, about $31,000, will come from cuts in uniform allowances for current firefighters, Grimes said.

Meanwhile, several more negotiating sessions to discuss the labor contract are scheduled for the coming weeks. Both sides said they are hopeful that they can reach agreement before Laffey leaves office at the end of the year (He is running for U.S. Senate).

"I know a lot of people are probably thinking there's absolutely no way, but I don't say that. Both sides know business is business, and that's what were doing," Valletta said. "We're not letting anything from the past stand in the way of negotiations, and we've actually had some decent negotiating sessions."