Whitehorse firefighters are close to getting a raise.
On Monday night, Whitehorse council approved ratifications to the collective agreement between the city and the employees represented by the International Association of Firefighters, local 2217.
The current collective agreements expired on December 31, 2013.
Negotiating teams for the city and the IAFF membership reached a memorandum of settlement for the collective agreement.
The new agreement will bring Whitehorse firefighters salary in line with firefighters in B.C. and Alberta, said Barb Walker, the city’s human resources manager.
“We negotiated a market adjustment to bring firefighters salary in line with firefighters in the rest of our comparative group,” she said.
The duration of the new contract will be from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2021.
When the revised agreement has been finalized, a bylaw will be brought forward to adopt the new collective agreement.
The new agreement reflects the economic increases that the city granted its general employee group transit employees.
“All of the staff have received the same economic increases,” Walker said.
Salaries were raised on September 1, 2013 by one per cent. In September 2014 another increase of one-and-a-half per cent will occur. In 2015 and 2016 the increase is two per cent and falls to one-and-a-half per cent again in March 2017.