San Francisco Fire Fighters, Local 798, International Ass'n of FireFighters, AFL-CIO v. Civil Service Commission of City

Appellants San Francisco Fire Fighters Local 798, et al., appeal a judgment denying their petition for writ of mandate commanding respondents Civil Service Commission et al., to readjust appellants’ salaries by revising the wage and salary surveys upon which the city charter requires such salaries to be based. Specifically, appellants sought to require respondents to include in their wage and salary surveys the employees’ share of the required contributions to the Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS) which some governmental entities within the survey area pay on behalf of their employees. We conclude that the city charter does not permit the inclusion of such payments within the salary survey, and affirm.

The San Francisco Charter provides that appellants’ salaries shall be determined by, and based upon, the prevailing wage of like positions in certain other defined communities. Pursuant to charter section 8.405, firefighters are paid the average of the maximum rates of compensation paid comparable firefighter classifications in all California cities with a population over 350,000. “Rates of compensation” is defined as “applying] only to a basic amount of wages,…