There’s a new labor agreement between Oxford Township and Oxford Fire Fighters Union, International Association of Fire Fighters Local 4763.

Union members ratified the contract on June 11 and the township board approved it in a 5-1 vote the following day.

The contract – the union’s fourth one with Oxford since 2010 – took effect on June 12 and will expire on Dec. 31, 2021. The previous contract expired at the end of last year.

Under the new contract, union firefighters will receive no wage increases in 2020 and 2021 unless township employees do. “The township agrees that if the township employees receive a general annual wage increase, the union will also receive the equivalent raise,” the contract states.

That’s what happened this year. Both township employees and firefighters received a 3 percent pay increase.

The only issue some township board members had is with the $100 signing bonus that each union member will be paid for ratifying the agreement.

“There’s no need for that,” said Treasurer Joe Ferrari, who cast the lone vote against the contract.

To him, signing bonuses are something “professional athletes” receive, not government employees.

“To me, we’re very fortunate to work for the government (and) get the wages and the benefits that we do,” Ferrari said.

Even though the amount was $100 now, the treasurer feared it could increase with future contracts.

“I don’t want to start that precedent,” he said.

Supervisor Bill Dunn also disagreed with giving a signing bonus. He, too, likened it to what’s done for professional athletes and wondered if the next step is “trading first-round draft choices and hockey sticks.”

“It’s not the amount. It’s the principle . . . It just irks me,” he said.

In a phone interview on June 17, Local 4763 President Kevin Snell said “we felt” the officials’ analogies to professional athletes were “unnecessary” because signing bonuses are used in other types of private and public employment, “not just professional sports.”

“It’s just a tool in the toolbox for any negotiator,” he said.

Snell explained in this case, the signing bonus was agreed to “in lieu of” giving union members any retroactive pay they might have been owed from working “without a contract for over five months.”

He pointed out that when the township approved the first fire union contract in November 2010, that document contained a ratification bonus. Each union member was paid $500 for approving the labor agreement.

Snell said that bonus was agreed to because it took longer than expected to get the first contract in place.

The two union contracts between the 2010 agreement and the current one did not contain any ratification or signing bonuses.

The fire union isn’t the only local collective bargaining unit to have secured a signing bonus. When Oxford Village approved its current police labor agreement in 2017, it contained a $1,000 signing bonus for each union member.

Signing bonuses aside, Snell wished to “thank the administration for their time and the fair contract that we were able to work out.”

“We’re happy to continue to serve the citizens of Oxford,” he said.