Fire union chief touches on legislation

Lt. Mike Smaldino has 11 years in the Colorado Springs Fire Department and has been president of the 325-member Colorado Springs firefighters union, Local 5 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, for five years.

His union job may soon get much more interesting. A bill approved by the 2009 Legislature grants collective bargaining rights to firefighter unions in the state.

The bill, SB180, would not permit the unions to strike, and the voters, not an arbitrator, would be the ultimate judge in the event of an impasse. But if Gov. Bill Ritter signs the bill, Smaldino will have far more influence over his members' pay and working conditions.

The bill does not sit well with the Colorado Municipal League, which argues that it violates the constitutionally guaranteed local-control rights of Colorado Springs and other cities with home-rule charters.

"I'm not here to oppose collective bargaining if the citizens want to grant it," said Colorado Springs Vice Mayor Larry Small, a Municipal League board member. "The issue is our rights as a home-rule community to govern ourselves."

Collective bargaining for public employees has been rejected eight times in Colorado Springs since 1979, he said.

Smaldino, 34, was interviewed by phone and at his "office" - Fire Station 4 on Southgate Road.

Question: What does Senate Bill 180 do for your union that it didn't already have?

Answer: There was no input (from the union) on the front side. It was all input after. That's going to be the biggest change - that we both sit down before the decisions are made, and actually have the discussion, opposed to after the decision is made.

Q: How do your priorities change as a result of this law? What will you ask for?

A: Our No. 1 is to make sure there are four people per heavy firefighting apparatus. Over the years that's been kind of a sticking point. That is strictly a safety issue. It's no additional cost for that because we already have four people per apparatus. But there's no guarantee we're going to keep it. Nobody has been willing to put that down on a piece of paper.

Q: What's your relationship with the fire chief, Steven Cox?

A: Currently we have a good working relationship. This kind of makes sure that that relationship continues if he were to change or current city administration were to change.

Q: Some people say collective bargaining will poison labor relations.

A: I see it actually improving the relationship because we're both forced to sit down at the same table. A lot of these guys saying that have never once come to talk to me about it.

Q: This business about bankrupting the city has to come from somewhere.

A: To be completely honest, it's a scare tactic. Like I said, both of us are sitting down at the same table. We both understand the same budget. I can't ask for the moon and only say I'm going to give up very little. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to bankrupt my employer. I don't want to put either of us in a situation that neither of us can live up to.

Q: How would you describe the quality of equipment you guys are given to work with?

A: We've been very good at getting good gear, new gear, making sure that our men and women are in the best gear possible. Where we have a problem is when you have a fire and your gear gets dirty. There's standards out there that say you need to wash it and keep it clean, because we're giving off all the yucky stuff that's in fires. It goes through a special washing system and it takes time, obviously, to do that. What a lot of departments have gone to is to get an actual second set of gear. We were on our way to doing that, but we had to ax that out of our budget.

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Contact the writer at 476-1654.