Negotiations with the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 200, the union that represents City of Bartlesville firefighters, remain stagnant despite efforts to move forward on an agreement for a 2025-26 Fiscal Year contract, City Attorney Jess Kane told the City Council on Monday.
Kane said the IAFF has yet to respond to the City’s most recent offer, which was submitted to the union in September, and attempts to work with the union to agree on a neutral arbitrator have yielded no results.
What’s proposed
City negotiators are asking the IAFF to agree to promotional reforms that would allow firefighters to be promoted based on merit rather than seniority, and for steps concerning overtime pay that officials say would reduce the ongoing abuse of sick leave within the department.
The union’s offer initially included a 10 percent pay increase, twice the amount all other City employees received for the fiscal year, an increase for clothing allowance and an automatic pay increase upon promotion, as well as changes to the department’s minimum manning requirements. The union later reduced its pay increase request to 6 percent and dropped the proposed minimum manning requirements.
Arbitration
Kane said the City initiated the arbitration process shortly after making its most recent offer. Arbitration is an adversarial process where each side selects an arbitrator and agrees on a neutral arbitrator to hear the arguments and render a finding. If the union prevails in arbitration, the City has the option of asking Bartlesville voters to decide the outcome in an election.
“The interest arbitration process was initiated by the City on Sept. 29 but has been delayed due to the ongoing federal government shutdown,” Kane said. “The City has proposed to the IAFF that a neutral arbitrator be appointed by agreement of the parties from outside the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which would allow the arbitration process to proceed. But the Union has failed to respond.
“In short, the Union has failed to respond or continue negotiations in good faith but has chosen to instead engage in a no-holds barred social media blitz.”
Promotional process reform
Kane pointed at the lack of social media chatter regarding promotional reform as an indication that union negotiators know changes to the system are long overdue.
“I take this as a tacit admission from the union that a promotional system based on merit rather than seniority is a long overdue, foregone conclusion,” he said. “The union, through its terminally online surrogates, has argued that the City’s proposal would allow for bias and favoritism, but as (City Manager Mike Bailey) has already pointed out in City Beat, the promotional process the City has proposed is based on a process that the Union already agreed to for promotion of battalion chiefs. If the process is inherently biased, why was it okay for battalion chiefs?
“A promotional system based on merit will benefit the public through increased performance, but it will also benefit rank and file firefighters who want to work hard and earn promotion faster than the senior union bosses that are content to just wait for what’s coming to them without putting forward any extra effort.”
Sick leave & BFD overtime system
Kane said social media has been abuzz, however, concerning the City’s request to reduce pay for unscheduled overtime — from double time to time and a half. He said doing so would reduce unnecessary sick leave from being taken, which would save Bartlesville taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.
“Our firefighters have used an average of 188 hours of sick leave – nearly a full month off – over the past six years,” Kane said. “This is 85 hours more than the average in our universe (the 10 most comparable cities in Oklahoma.) It is two and a half to four times as much as their counterparts in Owasso, Enid and Bixby. Common sense dictates that firefighters in Owasso are not less prone to injury or illness performing the same job than firefighters in Bartlesville.”
Kane gave an example of the broken sick leave/overtime system by telling the story of one firefighter was able to use loopholes in the system to draw $100,000 in FY 2024-25 “without working a single day.”
“He accomplished this in large part through the use of sick leave,” Kane said.
Kane further illustrated his point by showing the following facts:
- Bartlesville firefighters are over 5 times more likely to use personal sick time in a short period than in a long.
- They are over 2 times more likely to use family sick time in a long period than in a short.
- They use 81% of their total sick leave when it will not affect their overtime pay.
Long, short periods
“In order to understand why this data is so significant, you must understand how firefighters’ work schedules are structured,” he said. “Firefighters work on a rotating schedule. In some pay periods they work four days — this is called a ‘short period.’ In others, they work five days — this is a ‘long period.’ In a long period, firefighters automatically receive 14 hours of overtime. In a short period, they do not.
“Here’s the important part: if a firefighter uses sick leave during a long period, they lose that automatic overtime, and the entire pay period is paid at the regular rate. So what happens? The data shows a clear trend: Most sick leave is taken during short periods, when there’s no overtime to lose — even though short periods only make up about 30 percent of the year. Meanwhile, family sick leave, which does not reduce overtime, is mostly taken during long periods.
“This pattern is not accidental — it reflects how the current structure incentivizes when sick leave is used. The result for the City is that during short pay periods, the City must not only pay the individual who called in sick, but must also force back another firefighter at double time. And remember, double time is awarded by seniority, so the double time benefit goes overwhelmingly to more senior members of the union, not to junior firemen who need the money and could benefit from the experience.”
Kane said the data demonstrates a “broad, departmentwide pattern of behavior to maximize sick leave for personal gain at the expense of the taxpayer.”
“We have either a remarkable coincidence in which viruses and injuries only manifest to the disadvantage of the City, or a demonstrable pattern of union members pursuing their own self-interest through the loopholes of a flawed contract,” he said.
Kane maintained the IAFF was aware of this ability to manipulate the system and “took specific action to preserve the status quo” by requesting that the department’s minimum manning requirements be increased to 18 firefighters per shift in its original offer.
“Minimum manning requirements is a clear management right, set by the fire chief, and has never been a part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement,” Kane said. “Why did the union suddenly become concerned with minimum manning in 2025? It is not an issue they had ever negotiated before, and it had never been a part of the contract.
“The answer is that the fire chief had proposed an increase to the fire department’s budget to allow for the hiring of four additional firefighters to allow him to better manage his overtime budget. The union saw this move by the City towards improved overtime management and sought to amend the contract to prevent the fire chief from managing his overtime budget. The Union has since withdrawn this demand, but the episode remains as proof that the union is aware of the overtime problem and specifically sought to preserve its members’ ability to abuse overtime to the detriment of the taxpayer.”
Next steps
Kane pointed to the complexities of firefighter shifts, pay calculations, labor laws, and the department’s promotional process as playing a part in some of the confusion about what the issues really are, particularly in how they are being portrayed on social media.
“The Collective Bargaining Agreement and its interplay with State and Federal laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act is extremely complex,” he said. “That complexity is not conducive to explanation in a forum like this, and certainly not on Facebook. I again refer you to Mr. Bailey’s interview in the Oct. 17 edition of City Beat for a more in-depth explanation of these complex issues.”
He said the City is in hopes negotiations can continue soon and that an agreement can be reached without arbitration or a potential public election.
“We remain committed to a responsible reform of the Collective Bargaining Agreement to address the promotional and overtime issues we have been discussing,” Kane said. “We believe these reforms will benefit the public through increased professional competence in the fire service and responsible overtime budgeting, as well as individual firefighters who will be rewarded from excellence through promotion and increased pay. We continue to await a response from the union”
More information:
City Beat October 17, 2025
City Beat October 7, 2025.
PowerPoint presentation, November 3, 2025, City Council meeting
City Council meeting webcast November 3, 2025