In a federal lawsuit filed yesterday, an organization of African American firefighters accused the Philadelphia firefighters union of being "racially harassing and abusive" to blacks.
The lawsuit said union leadership was dominated by members of a predominantly white firefighters organization dedicated to ending a 25-year-old federal consent decree that paved the way for the hiring of many black firefighters.
The members of that group, the Concerned American Fire Fighters Association (CAFFA), have pushed their agenda at the union, the lawsuit said. It noted that the union's December bargaining proposal to the city included the request that "any and all quota-based hiring practices" be eliminated.
"They're using my union dues to do it," said Kenneth Greene, president of Club Valiants, the black firefighters group. "It's a slap in the face."
The president of Concerned American Fire Fighters, Mike Bresnan, said the proposal to eliminate quota-based hiring subsequently was dropped, in part because an arbitration panel has no standing to rule on the issue.
"The proposal came from the membership," he said. "It's a democratic process."
The lawsuit said the Philadelphia Fire Fighters' Union, Local 22, has no black officers and only one black employee - a janitor. Union meetings have become so divisive that black firefighters no longer attend.
"African Americans have no voice in the union," the suit said.
The lawsuit also cited numerous postings from the union's private, Internet message board that mock black firefighters as lazy and stupid, and use "ebonics" to denigrate blacks.
Among other remedies, the suit askes a federal judge to appoint a civil-rights monitor to oversee the local until it is no longer "a racially hostile union."
The suit seeks class-action status for the more than 500 black Philadelphia firefighters.
Bill Gault, president of Local 22, said the allegation that the union was racist was "completely not true." He acknowledged there was only one black janitor working for the union, but said "the ladies who work for me in the office are firefighters' wives."
"Two of them have been there longer than I've been on the job," he said.
Gault had not seen a copy of the lawsuit yesterday and could not comment at length. He said he simply wanted "everybody on the same page in the contract negotiations with the city."
At the heart of the suit is the philosophical battle over the 1984 federal consent decree, which mandated the hiring of more black firefighters and replaced an entrance exam deemed to discriminate against black applicants.
The consent decree, which resulted from a 1974 lawsuit, was extended indefinitely by a federal court in 1999.
Some white firefighters have begun to push back against the hiring and promotion processes.
This year, the city paid a $275,000 settlement to five white lieutenants who said they were denied promotions by exams skewed to favor minority candidates.
This summer, three white candidates for the fire academy sued, arguing that they had been denied entrance in favor of less-qualified minority candidates.
Bresnan's organization has been allowed to intervene in federal court on behalf of the three in an attempt to overturn the consent decree.
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