When you’re the head of the firefighters union, you get a lot of phone calls. Like the one Dave Engler received Saturday from a retired firefighter who was having trouble making ends meet on his pension.

“I can’t live off this,” the retiree told Engler, president of the local union.

“I get these retirees and they’re like, ‘My whole pension check goes toward health insurance,’” Engler said. “Most people would be surprised to hear what our former public servants are living off of.”

Engler hopes to get fewer calls like that in the future if the City Council signs off on a labor agreement reached by his union and the mayor’s office.

Lincoln firefighters agreed to forgo salary increases this year (aside from step increases some employees will get) in exchange for annual cost-of-living increases, or COLAs, to their pensions. The deal wouldn’t cover current retirees.

The smallest pension among Lincoln’s retired firefighters is $324 a month, paid out to a firefighter who retired in 1975.

“Had someone done it years ago, then this guy would be OK,” Engler said of the need for annual increases to keep up with inflation.

Mayor Chris Beutler said he became concerned about retirees’ “long, continuing retirement” when he learned firefighters (and police officers) don’t pay into or  get Social Security benefits.

“This is their Social Security — their one and only pension,” Beutler said.

However, Beutler will have to get the City Council to sign off on the labor agreement, and Councilman Ken Svoboda said he’s not sure it’ll pass muster with the council. Svoboda opposes the plan because he said it would be difficult to “pull back” in tough times, and creates a large liability.

He said firefighters knew what the retirement benefits were when they signed on with the city.

Most Lincoln firefighters are eligible to retire when they are 50 years old and have 25 years of service. Firefighters’ pensions are 64 percent of their highest annual base salary, but without annual cost-of-living adjustments, the value of that pension fades with time, Engler said.

(The city does give retirees an extra lump sum payment of $1,034 every September since it doesn’t give COLAs. Existing retirees would continue to receive the annual lump sum payment instead of a COLA.)

Engler said retirees’ pensions  clearly haven’t kept pace with inflation. The average monthly benefit for Lincoln firefighter retirees is about $1,400. Svoboda said some people can “live well” on that amount, while others can’t.

The average Social Security benefit for retired workers in August 2008 was $1,086.

The Lincoln Firefighters Association, which represents about 300 fire department employees, is one of five city employee unions that negotiated new labor contracts this year. The mayor asked all the unions to hold salary increases to 2.4 percent. The deal offered to the fire union would cost the equivalent of a 2.4 percent salary increase.

Under the proposal, the city would begin paying COLAs in 2010 at a rate of either 1.5 percent or the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is less.

In order to help pay for the COLA, most firefighters would increase their contribution to the pension plan by 4 percent (for a total of 12 percent of their salary).

Once there is enough money in the fund, which is expected to take seven or eight years, the COLA would increase to 2 percent and firefighters’ contributions would drop 1.35 percent.

The mayor says this plan saves the city money because salary increases could have cost the city $304,000 more if the city had given firefighters a 4 percent raise (they wanted an 8 percent raise).

The agreement includes a provision specifying that the city’s contribution toward the COLA will count toward wage comparisons in future labor negotiations — which are just around the corner, since all the labor contracts are only one-year agreements.

Although police officers participate in the same pension fund, the police union negotiated salary increases instead of participating in this plan. The police union head could not be reached for comment.

Police and fire managers also participate in the pension fund, and would also get the COLA.

The labor agreement needs approval by the City Council, which is expected to take up the proposal Oct. 13. If the council rejects the plan, the union could go to the state Commission of Industrial Relations to enforce a law that requires their salaries be comparable to their peers’. Engler indicated that’s a possibility.

Svoboda said if the council rejects COLAs, perhaps the union would be amenable to bringing in a third party arbitrator.

Councilman Dan Marvin sees the need to improve pensions: While campaigning door-to-door for the Legislature, one man told him his neighbor was a retired firefighter losing his house.

“There are some horror stories out there of some people getting what was at one time a significant amount of money, like $500 a month, and now they’re still getting $500 a month and it’s quite difficult for some people,” Marvin said.

Engler said he hopes the council approves the plan.

“Honestly, I think it’s a good deal for everybody involved.”

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.