Firefighters in Kings County are being paid less than $20 an hour: they want a raise

KINGS COUNTY, Calif. ( KSEE/KGPE ) – The union representing firefighters in Kings County wants the Board of Supervisors to approve a pay rise that would put them above what fast food workers now receive .

According to the Kings County Firefighters Local 3747, their members are paid $18.58 per hour – and a post on the union’s social media page earlier this month highlighted how that is now lower than those who work in fast food . Contract negotiations between Kings County Firefighters Local 3747 have been ongoing for over 270 days.

The association’s secretary, Kevin Garcia, says firefighter recruitment and retention has been an issue for the last three years. The result is firefighters being spread thin, exhausted, and in danger at work.

“If we can’t recruit, we can’t retain, then tackling those other issues is not really feasible,” Garcia said.

According to Garcia, he has seen 24 firefighters leave Kings County to make more money at competing counties – or other professions entirely. That leads to less staff in their district.

“I don’t just mean entry-level firefighters,” Garcia says, “we’ve had captains leave, we’ve had engineers leave, all to take on roles as entry-level firefighters.”

The association’s President Ed Rhyman recalls a particularly bad structure fire that took a toll on the understaffed fire crew.

“We had a structure fire in Stratford, it was 112 degrees,” Rhyman said, “We were exhausted, my heart rate didn’t go down below 100 til like one in the morning.”

According to a study done by the National Institute of Standards and Technology , the size of firefighting crews has a substantial effect on the fire service’s ability to protect lives and property in residential fires.

The study says that “four-person firefighting crews were able to complete 22 essential firefighting and rescue tasks in a typical residential structure 30 percent faster than two-person crews.” The Kings County Professional Firefighters Association says that they only recently were able to put two people on a fire engine, and up until a few years ago they only had one person.

The lack of funds for these firefighters comes as a result of where their funding comes from, according to Garcia.

“At the beginning of our negotiations, we were presented with kind of a budget summary by [Kings County] which listed all of the general fund departments,” Garcia said, “We were being treated as a special district operating off of a fire fund.”

Garcia says special districts are funded solely by property and fire taxes; making them a general district would open them up to a larger pot of funds.

“That’s the same fund that departments like the sheriff’s department operate off. So it opens up a bigger pot not just for raises, but just for staffing in general.”

The Kings County Board of Supervisors will next be meeting Tuesday, April 9, and Kings County firefighters want the people they serve to speak alongside them in a bid to break the stalemate and find a solution.

YourCentralValley.com has reached out to Kings County for a statement in response.

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