Bloomington's fire chief says the addition of a fourth work shift next year will likely save the department on workers' compensation costs and reduce employee turnover.
Cory Matheny said the department has seen a more than 30% increase in fire and ambulance calls in the last five years — without additional staffing. That, he said, has caused a strain.
“You would think the incidents of work-related injuries and repetitive injuries should go down and that would help offset the need for some overtime,” Matheny said on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
Currently, the firefighters in Bloomington are 24 hours on and 48 hours off. Matheny said the department has worked in 24-hour shifts for more than a century. The new schedule of 72 hours off for every 24-hour shift worked will start in January as part of a new labor agreement the city council approved on Monday.
The contract also gives firefighters a 5% equity pay increase retroactive to May 1, plus a 4% across-the-board raise in May 2026 and a 3.5% hike in May 2027.
Matheny said the new work schedule will keep firefighters healthy and rested.
“Taking the first step in this and doing this investment makes us a destination where people are going to want to come work for us for a long time,” he said.
The addition of a fourth shift will drop the average weekly workload from 52 hours to about 47.
City staff projects it will save about $85,000 in overtime per hire by enabling the department to recruit paramedics, rather than provide on-the-job training, which the city recently started doing to address staffing shortages.
A growing number of fire agencies in Illinois have moved to four work shifts.
Matheny said he was skeptical the department would have the available firefighters to add a fourth shift when the union, International Association of Firefighters [IAFF] Local 49, raised the idea.
“When we came back and said no, we don’t think we can make that work, that’s a huge impact on our budget, they said ‘Hold on we have a plan,’” Matheny explained.
The department, which has 116 firefighters and a full staff of 131 employees, fills 29 positions with each daily shift with another nine on backup to fill-in for illnesses, injuries and other absences.
“We’re able to take nine of those people every day and assign them to this new shift,” Matheny said.
The plan calls for hiring two additional firefighters in the 2026 and 2027 budget years and possibly four additional firefighters of overtime costs for the 2029 fiscal year.
