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Comment by kqr2 | Hacker News Reader

Actually if you are a firefighter in San Francisco, you can qualify for a special downpayment assistance loan of up to $200,000 that requires no payments for 30 years

http://sfmohcd.org/first-responders-down-payment-assistance-...

Also starting salary for SFFD is from $72,670.00 - 112,190.00/year which doesn't include overtime.

https://www.jobaps.com/SF/sup/bulpreview.asp?R1=CCT&R2=H002&...

Firefighters are actually some of the highest paid city workers. In 2013, 31 of the top 50 earners were from the SFFD.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Fire-Dept-dominate...

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Good for them. Emergency workers should be paid a living wage, and for SF $72k-$112k seems completely reasonable.

> Firefighters are actually some of the highest paid city workers. In 2013, 31 of the top 50 earners were from the SFFD.

as the article you linked to mentions, this is largely due to one time payments due to people cashing out unused vacation and sick days when they retire.

Whoever does emergency work for only a "living wage" is more of a saint than Mother Theresa. They deserve at least mid-range for their locale.

I was surprised to see that as well. Forget about highest-paid -- just the stability of a government job allows one to afford homes. I might make more as a developer, but i have no idea when i'll be laid-off and how long i might be out of work. That forces me to stretch far less than a firefighter or teacher.

Finance. Or rather working at a large bank, also comes with great job stability. If you are a developer on one of the core systems you are basically set for life.

You need to take into account that firefighters sometimes get injured and even die doing their jobs. Getting laid off isn't the only way to lose their job.

Insurance?

Don't they get compensation for that, which should still enable them to keep up with mortage payments?

Very true. Here is a long treatise on the subject with some sources. http://www.iaff1775.org/the-truth-about-firefighter-retireme...

Clearly it is not a balanced article (since it comes from a FireFighters Union) but it definitely made some good points.

Strong unions negotiate good wages. Good for them.

Good for them. Bad for the taxpayer.

Strong unions are symptoms, not causes. Blaming unions because rich/powerful people have a tendency to fuck over the powerless is exactly what the rich/powerful want you to do. The rich and powerful benefit far more from low taxes than the stereotypical "tax payer".

Addendum: for God's sake, your precious karma score is a number on a website. If it matters to you so much that you create new accounts to say something people might not like, you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

Reply to addendum: Pseudonymity is not anonymity - a lot of people post here under a handle known to friends and/or coworkers (or generally prefer to post without hiding their identities.) They may be posting under throwaways in order not to be judged for their opinions IRL (or fired for them.)

So it's not all magic internet points.

The taxpayer ought to be ashamed of short changing people.

They also ought to have the common sense that it's better to pay a living wage, than pick up the bill in welfare.

This. I've never understood the convoluted logical gyrations required to get through "unions are bad" -> "free market should be allowed to set wages (without workers having freedom to collectively bargain)" -> "non-livable wages spread for workers without capital" -> "griping about welfare and lazy people who should just work more".

Yes, unions can metastasize and block their own effectiveness. But a properly bounded union isn't a terrible thing.

Christ. Just look at all of western europe to see unions working well for the most part.

There's a major difference between a public employee union and a private sector union. In the private sector, a union organizes to put leverage on management, who represents ownership (i.e. the stockholders, the partners, etc). Ownership made a choice to invest in the company, and was able to weigh factors like labor rates and work environment before they invested.

But in a public employee union, labor is organizing for leverage against ownership, which in a democracy is everyone under the government's jurisdiction. In this case, ownership is investing in the union without the same choice.

If we live under a government that is of, by, and for the people, collective bargaining via unions is oppressive. Labor negotiations should take place at the ballot box, and public employees should live with what's decided there.

Thank you. It is astonishing how few people understand the distinction (public/private).

Can you explain the relevance of the distinction?

We live under a government where oppressive discrimination by the majority is also illegal.

You're expecting a majority to care about a livable wage for their fellow man or woman more than an extra dollar in their pocket saved from taxes. That's not a very realistic expectation and taken to conclusion, damaging for the country and the services provided by those employees (no expecting Ritz treatment at Walmart salaries).

I included a caveat about how unions need to be bounded, and there are additional needs in the public sector, but the same tensions that drive their necessity exists for public employees as well. Just because you choose a government job shouldn't mean you sign your rights away.

Wait but why?

We vote for representatives to negotiate with their labor force and contractors.

There is a big difference between paying a "living wage" to government workers, and paying them far above the market salary for people with similar credentials.

Who are these people you speak of that have similar credentials to a fire fighter?

Loggers and fisherman?

Interesting. I was wondering how accurate this was, and in terms of the risk of the job, it more than checks out according to my first result. http://www.cultureofsafety.com/2013/01/your-odds-of-dying-at... Of course that doesn't cover medical risk like cancer.

Skill-wise, I would expect they are comparable in skill level if not skill set.

Fire service could be privatized and government provided welfare does not have to exist to begin with.

Result, slums, city destroying fires, people dying in the street. You do realize also, that chronically sick malnourished sweatshop serfs do awful work?

It's a dystopian hell only a libertarian could love.

It's not a libertarian ideal. It's more of an Anarcho-syndicalist ideal.

I'm always shocked when such terrible ideas are put forth for consideration in a public forum.

Privatize essential life safety services? Because that has worked oh so well for healthcare.

healthcare is the state it is in because of government interference in the insurance markets at Federal and State levels. When you cannot cross state lines to offer competing insurance how can anyone expect a good system. Before anyone points to government run healthcare in the US being good please explain away the VA

The standard line always is, "we will do it better than X" - well fix current government run healthcare first

Arguably, U.S. government interference in healthcare markets has been heavily influenced by insurance lobbyists for the purpose of increasing insurance profits. Although there is often a trade-off between availability and quality, other countries have managed to provide decent healthcare without exorbitant cost.

If you don't just to want beat up a strawman, the US interference in health care is not a good argument against government interference in health care in general.

The NHS in the UK has its problems, but they are not nearly as bad.

(I don't know which country's system is the best to look at as a good example of private health care. Perhaps the best parts of India? (India ostensibly has government healthcare, but it's so bad that everyone who can afford it gets private health care. I don't know how bad the interference is.)))

You realize that firefighting is a job that requires a great deal of training and education, and it's a job that's very easy to do badly?

Not only that, but fires spread, they need to be caught early, and they're preventable. It's not just a matter of performing a service for one home at a time if they catch on fire, it's a matter of performing a public service to reduce the risk of fire, enforce building codes, minimize damage caused by fires, and save lives. This is something that requires a community effort, and needs to cover the entire community uniformly.

Most jobs provide some important service. The person that bags groceries at the supermarket is part of the system that feeds all of us. Firefighting is a job; one that is widely respected. However, the workers on farms and ranches and fishing boats work under riskier conditions and are paid less. Firefighting isn't a particularly dangerous job (although several times riskier than programming). With respect to training, I'm not a firefighter and I'm sure it varies by department, but I believe firefighting requires a highschool degree, EMS training and a few weeks of training on firefighting methods.

Before being concerned about firefighters, it seems to me that we should be more concerned with improving the conditions for loggers and garbage collectors which have much greater work related risks.

I wasn't expressing concern about the position, I was explaining why it would be a bad decision to privatize it. None of the things I listed mention anything about it being "dangerous" or "risky" One of the biggest arguments against privatization, I think, is that they're responsible for enforcing building fire codes, and that's a very non-dangerous task. I have no idea what your response is supposed to mean.

Yes, and also the economy is in big trouble when people with full time gainful employment (yes even with the government, which is a major employer) have no money to buy things.

Always remember that public employees are taxpayers, too.

Why is he being downvoted? I don't get this site sometimes. San Francisco is a union town--get used to it. (It might be the last union town.)

Yes--firefigheters, electricians, plumbers, cops, etc. make a very livable wage.

I've been in a San Francisco union, and never felt so--what's the word--protected.

No--I didn't like the fact that everyone was paid the same, but in retrospect I was wrong. There will be a day where you are not the best in the room. You won't be the Rock Star. You will thank the socialists for that union.

To be honest, I think certain sectors of tech would benefit from a union. So many of you go to that fun place. You get free food. You get free sodas. You get the fun office hootenannies. And a salary that's barely livable.

We're still in a bull market in tech. All the Ayn Rand/Rebublican mantra will get very old when it gamblers decide to pull that money back in.

Sorry, I'm a fan of unions. Worked too many non-union jobs; jobs that were worse than not working. For some reason, owners only like to pay just what they get away with.

Because public sector unions are not bargaining on the same footing or with similar power that private unions do. They have an undue influence over local elections and in effect can hold local politicians hostage by it. There have been many documented cases where said unions used intimidation to include billboards and the like against any politician trying to reign in retirement and similar benefits back to reasonable levels.

Corporations do the same shit from an opposite angle. You need opposing groups to form a balance; unfortunately in our society, things are heavily weighted towards corporate power.

How do public unions get more influence?

> How do public unions get more influence?

Public sector unions operate in a way analogous to private-sector unions where the union members are mostly also shareholders of the corporation for which they are employed, and work together to lobby other shareholders for action as well as engaging in the usual collective bargaining approaches. This is rare (though not impossible) in the private sector, though there is a private-sector business model (the union co-op model) in which the union more power than in any public union situation, because the union workers are the entirety of the ownership group, not just an important and active subset of the constituency [0].

[0] http://www.geo.coop/story/unions-and-worker-co-ops-working-t...

I have mixed feelings towards unions. I grew up just outside of Flint, MI, so the UAW was a big part of my life (though my parents were not GM workers, so it was not as big a part of my life as it was for my friends). I am in favor of unions in theory, as I tend to think that businesses will take advantage of their workers as much as they think they can, and a union is a great way for workers to protect themselves. But, eventually GM moved all of their factory jobs overseas and the whole Greater Flint area has suffered because of it. Now, I'm not going to lay the blame for this solely at the feet of the UAW, GM is ultimately responsible, but I'm sure the outlandish wages that the UAW had secured for their (unskilled) labor didn't help any. Demanding a living wage is vital, but when you have an unskilled workforce that is comprised entirely of high school graduates (or even dropouts in some cases) that are all making enough money to afford 2 homes, a boat, and enough cars to litter their front yard with them, I can see why a business would start looking at moving those jobs elsewhere.

So, I guess I would say that I am a fan of unions, but I believe that, while a unions primary goal should be protecting their workers, they should also be cognizant of the needs of the business(es) to which their workers sell their labor.

If a company is not going to pay you a living wage either way, the union did not mean anything. I often decry compromise because it means settling for worse - in the case of Michigan, while it is awful how rampant poverty and unemployment are there now that the union jobs dried up, the alternative was the slow gradual death of reasonable wages like is happening everywhere else. The union bought their workers as much time as they could but nobody will stop the trends of globalization and automation, and as a society we need to do a lot more to handle rampant unemployability than we are now.

Unions can only protect the living wage employable in the long term.

It seems the union did not buy as much time as they could. By ratcheting up wages so fast, they hastened the day that automation was cheaper than labor. Cheaper to go overseas anyway. By overreaching, the situation was made worse, in the sense of "the party's over" happening a decade earlier than it might have.

It's because y combinator is an incubator for startup companies. Anyone who owns a startup doesn't want a union in their own company.

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