A painful public ordeal, votes of no confidence surface from time to time in cities across the nation where firefighters are unionized by the International Association of Fire Fighters. The situation in each city is unique, but a vote of no confidence is almost always the culmination of months of strife between the union local and the fire chief. Each case represents a chief embattled in a hostile labor/management atmosphere that seems to have no relief except a letter of resignation.

The fire chief — or former fire chief — who will talk about the experience is a brave soul. It takes years to get back on track. Some have stood and fought off the attack; some have lost or resigned their jobs as fire chief; some have even changed careers. No matter the outcome, the battle is one most chiefs don't want to dwell on. Even in departments where the chief's relations with the union have improved, the chief often would rather not crow about it. Better not to stir the sleeping tiger.

The no-confidence vote of union members against a fire chief doesn't have any direct power over the chief. It's a political tool, but the message about firefighters' lack of confidence in their chief can do significant damage to the chief's credibility and career. The message rings loudly in the media and is heard by the city's mayor and local government: A majority of firefighters on the front lines think the fire chief is doing a lousy job.

The media loves conflict and generally covers the juicy confrontation intensely. Verbal sparring between firefighters and the fire chief will be quoted for weeks, if not months. “Lack of trust … poor management … lack of support for firefighters … the fire chief's incompetence … unsafe conditions for firefighters … inept leadership” — and worse — are said about the fire chief in local newspapers, television and radio reports.

How do you respond? What follows are the tales of two chiefs — one who is still chief in the city and seems to be flourishing; another forced out by the union, never to work as a fire chief again. You can learn much from both.

She stayed

It happened to Madison (Wis.) Fire Chief Debra H. Amesqua in the summer of 1998. With 98% of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 311 membership responding to the call for a no-confidence vote, 171 voted against Amesqua, and only 18 voted for her.

Yet she endures as the fire chief in Madison. Relations with the union are improved, she says, and the department has made progress on many fronts. The department has been totally restructured. All frontline rigs have been replaced, and all stations have been remodeled or replaced. In fact, Madison opened a new fire station for the first time since 1963.

Every fire chief's political situation is unique. What worked for Amesqua won't work in all situations, but she's one of the few who've experienced a vote of no confidence who's willing to share what she's learned.

Amesqua became the fire chief in January 1996 and was the first woman and first Hispanic person to lead the department, which now serves a city of 217,000 people in a 64-square-mile metropolitan area with 11 stations. The department's budget is about $32 million.

At the time she was appointed fire chief, she was the first woman fire chief in Wisconsin and one of only a handful of women fire chiefs in nation. Amesqua talked openly about increasing the diversity of the department. She considered herself a force for progress.

The union presence was a strong one. IAFF Local 311 serves 310 firefighters in Madison and the surrounding area. As the president, Joe Conway had strong ideas about how the fire department should be run.

In Madison, the Police and Fire Commission hires the fire chief and the mayor makes the appointment. Outside of the appointment, the commission operates independently. However, the mayor was a former labor attorney and did not offer Amesqua the support she would have liked, she says.

Amesqua came up through the ranks, starting her career as a firefighter in 1983 with the Tallahassee (Fla.) Fire Department. She was promoted to driver in 1988, then rose to lieutenant, captain and assistant chief of training for the 246-member department. Amesqua is a graduate of both the National Fire Academy's Executive Fire Officer Program and the Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program at Harvard University.

Rough ride

Going into the chief's job in Madison, Amesqua says she expected a rough ride. She was an outsider par excellence: a Hispanic, a woman and a Floridian. At her swearing-in ceremony, a firefighter stood at the back of the room with her name in a big circle with a line across it.

“I often say that I expected controversy, and I have never been disappointed,” she says. “I knew that coming into this position was going to be difficult, and I knew that this was going to be a huge cultural change for the organization, so it was incumbent upon me to be able to deal with that type of attack and do it in a very constructive and thoughtful and professional way.”

About a year after she took over as chief, the union local's leaders presented Amesqua with a detailed written list of complaints about her management of the department. Amesqua countered with a written response in which she detailed her plans to address each problem.

“I really did try to address the concerns as legitimate concerns and worked very hard with my command staff to try to address each one of them individually and to the satisfaction of personnel in the field, understanding that there are certain things that I could not do,” Amesqua says.

The local was concerned about staffing levels. She said she shared that concern and proposed that union representatives go with her to the Police and Fire Commission to approach the staffing problem as a single voice from the department, “which we eventually did,” she says.

But many charges in the document revolved around what the union considered to be her lack of qualifications to lead the department. “I couldn't address that in any meaningful way except to submit my resignation, which is exactly what the union wanted,” she recalls. “But I was not going to go and give up the things that I had fought for so many years, and I clearly am qualified for the position.”

It's just politics

Looking back, Amesqua says her first mistake was naïvely believing that the fire chief only needed to worry about putting out fires in the physical sense.

“One of the biggest mistakes I made is to think that politics was kind of off-limits for a fire chief, and that I should probably not go and politick with my commissioners and not politick with community leaders — that I was supposed to run a fire department,” she says.

Even before the vote of no confidence, Amesqua began to study a booklet — now out of print — that was distributed by the International Association of Fire Chiefs at the time to increase her political savvy. She soon realized that if you want to survive as fire chief, you have to learn to play politics.

Amesqua says one of the most important elements of building her political base in the city of Madison was hiring a local public relations expert out of her own pocket. Melissa Mulligan had managed several successful political campaigns in the city and knew the territory. She helped Amesqua begin to reach out to the public in a systematic way.

Amesqua still consults her. “I pay her out of my own pocket to make sure that the message I'm sending to my community is the absolute exact message that I feel inside. Oftentimes, I'll call her when I have a political situation that's going to hit the press and we'll talk over the issue, and she will give me what I call the ‘theme’ of my responses to the media and how I want the community to use the fire chief's position.”

The first thing Amesqua did after the vote of no confidence was meet with the editorial advisory boards of the local newspapers and other media outlets to address the union's concerns. “I met with each of them personally, just myself and my PR person, who was there to take notes. I answered all of their questions as frankly and as honestly as I could with the knowledge I had at the time,” she says.

“It turned out extremely well because they recognized that we have two components here that are operating at a very high level: We had a union that was very strong and we had a fire chief that had a vision and certainly had a step-by-step procedure on how to get things done.… We simply disagreed at times on how to do that.”

Mulligan says Amesqua believed strongly that she had a mandate, and not just from the Police and Fire Commission. “She felt that because of her commitment to this city, her commitment to this department and the debt she owed to women who would come after her — that she owed it to all of them and to herself as a person of integrity and honor to continue to be chief and to continue her work in the department,” says Mulligan.

“So what she began to do is reach out more systematically and more consistently to people all around the city — business leaders, activities, folks at other labor unions.… We have a strong teachers union here in Madison and she reached out to leaders in public education.”

Amesqua took every opportunity to speak — at schools, Kiwanis Clubs, Lion's Clubs, public events — wherever there was a podium she carried a positive message about the fire department, its mission and her vision. Despite the controversy with the union, Mulligan says “she never refused an interview, never refused to go on camera and produced a very thorough document in response to the union's written allegations.”

Mulligan frequently accompanied the fire chief on interviews and in public appearances. She says her role was “aide,” to be the chief's eyes and ears as she went out in public. When Amesqua held press conferences, she and her PR aide prepared written press releases to make it easy for the press to report her message accurately.

“When you talk to an audience, one of the greatest challenges is to listen and respond well, to really focus on what's going on between you and the listener, and that's key to good communication,” Mulligan says. “When you're doing that, it's really helpful to have someone who is also hearing what you're saying and what the audience is saying. It enables you to follow up better. In debriefings after meetings, I would be able to say to her, ‘You know, when they asked this question, that was a great answer,’ or ‘I think you missed one point. Maybe we should follow up in writing to them.’”

Another vital component to Amesqua's support team over the years has been her attorney, who was assigned to her by the city. If your city doesn't, find one — and the more the attorney knows about the fire service, the better says Amesqua. She has nurtured her lawyer's knowledge by sending her to fire service conferences. “She has a good understanding of where we're going and what the lingo is, so that there is no misunderstanding when I'm asking her for legal advice,” Amesqua says.

Use your inner circle

Amesqua's inner circle, her immediate staff and family and friends, were important to her survival in a unionized department. For example, she began sending her assistant chief in charge of personnel to negotiations with the union. He provided a buffer and really helped heal the bad blood, she says.

It's absolutely vital that a chief reach out to an inner circle as well as to the public, Amesqua says. All fire chiefs are human; political combat is often emotional and the accusations are very personal at times. You need to be able talk to those who know you and believe in you.

Most of all, “You have to believe in yourself,” she says. “You have to be able to separate your personal feelings and your ego from the fire chief's position and look at it almost as an icon. Understand that you're there, but you're simply the conduit to the position and how it operates in the department.”

Spirituality helps, too. Amesqua says she's probably prayed more in the last nine years than ever in her life, for guidance and sometimes for forgiveness. As chief, you will make decisions that affect not just the individuals who work for the department, but for their families, their church, their grandparents, “even their ancestors down the road,” she says. “I try very much to look at things in the very broadest perspective that I can, and then realize that I'm human and that I make mistakes.”

Another thing that worked in her favor — ironically enough — was a fire department scandal that took media attention away from the vote of no confidence. Twelve firefighters were implicated in an investigation in which cocaine was purchased from the “chow fund” and distributed to other firefighters in the department.

“People sort of forgot about the vote of no confidence and focused on what I was going to do about those individuals,” says Amesqua. She went before the Police and Fire Commission and asked for and received several resignations.

Union view

Joe Conway is still president of Local 311 and is now in his third term as district vice president of the IAFF. He still thinks the department suffers from a leadership void at the top. Anything accomplished by the fire department comes from leaders at the division level and from assistant chiefs, not Amesqua, he says.

“We're still a fire department without a leader,” Conway says, “but she hasn't taken any steps to set the fire department back from where we've progressed in the past. It's kind of like a cold. There's nothing really getting accomplished, but we're not going backwards.”

Conway says he has no regrets about calling for the no-confidence vote, which he says was not intended to eliminate the fire chief but rather to point out her lack of credibility.

“It was effective because the fire chief was of the opinion that all the problems were coming from a small group of people that led the union that were against her and everybody else was fine with her,” he says. “Since then, any statements that the fire chief makes or tries to pass on to the public, they view with a critical eye.”

But Conway recommends union locals think long and hard before calling for a vote of no confidence. It should be a tactic of last resort, he says, because it will antagonize the fire chief and a lot of people in local government. Usually, it's more counterproductive than productive, he says.

In a September 2000 interview with Fire Chief magazine after he became general president of the IAFF, Harold Schaitberger said he personally did not advocate the use of a no-confidence vote by union locals:

“If you're going to take a position, and if you have a relationship with the chief that creates an atmosphere where you want to think about a no-confidence vote, I prefer to use the political power and the process I know we have and make a change. Voting no-confidence, to me, is empty. Maybe it makes you feel good at the moment, but it has very little effect.”

Back to the present

Seven years after the vote of no confidence and five years since the cocaine scandal, Amesqua says most people realize she's not going away. She graduated with honors from Alverno College in Milwaukee with a bachelor's degree in business management, and she just completed a term as president of the Women Chief Officers Association and serves on Fire Chief's editorial advisory board.

Last November, she presented a workshop on the how to survive a no-confidence vote at the WCOA 's annual conference in San Diego. She's a strong believer in networking with other fire chiefs. That means participating in organizations like the WCOA and the IAFC, she says. Amesqua stresses the WCOA aspires to be an organization that serves not just women fire service leaders, but to provide all fire service leaders “real nuts-and-bolts pieces of information to be a strong leader.”

Politics will never be easy, but she believes that being a fire chief is a political job that must constantly be honed. “Thomas Edison once said when a reporter asked about his 1,700 failed attempts to create the incandescent light bulb, ‘Why do you do this?’” Amesqua says. “Edison said, ‘I haven't failed 1,700 times; I know 1,700 ways it will not work.’ There is something to be said about an individual that goes through a vote of no confidence. I know what isn't going to work, but I also know what will work, at least in this environment.”

Not to discuss the experience would be a disservice to future fire service leaders, she says. “We all go through a vote of no confidence at some point, whether it's openly in our department or within ourselves. So I think that it's an important subject to talk about. It is very painful, but it's important and it is great learning.”

Bad Situation

Fifteen years ago, J. Gordon Routley achieved his boyhood dream of becoming a fire chief in Shreveport, La. But the dream turned into a nightmare that lasted 10 months. A union vote forced him to change his career.

“Oh, it was pretty exciting,” Routley says, recalling that time with a bit of gallows humor. “It was the kind of thing where before your alarm clock goes off in the morning, your telephone rings and you wake up and reach for the phone and a voice on the end says, ‘Hi! We're live on the radio! The union president says you're a no-good, low-life scumbag! What do you say?’”

Today, Routley is a successful freelance consultant, doing what he calls “good work for the fire service” across the United States and Canada. Living in his hometown of Montreal, he now spends most of his time as program director for the national Firefighter Life-Safety Initiative sponsored by the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. He's writing content for the Web site and educational training materials to help fire departments reduce LODDs. He has an impressive list of accomplishments behind him, including an engineering degree in fire protection and a master's degree in public administration.

After leaving Shreveport, he worked for the U.S. Fire Administration, writing courses for the National Fire Academy and incident reports on major multiple line-of-duty fatality fires. As a consultant, he is paid to conduct studies for fire departments on such things as potential mergers and consolidations and new communication centers.

“I've gone on to success, but I'm not doing what I really wanted to do, because what I really wanted to do was be a fire chief. And I've been working in the fire service and around fire departments, but there is certainly a feeling that what happened stood in the way of me being a fire chief,” he says.

Over the years, Routley has intensely mentally reviewed the events that led to the loss of his chosen career after he left his job as assistant chief of planning for the Phoenix Fire Department in 1989 to take the fire chief's position in Shreveport. For the life of him, he can't figure out anything else he could have done except “not go to Shreveport.”

Tell me what happened. How did the conflict with the union come about?

I came from Phoenix, where I was the assistant to [Chief Alan Brunacini.] I went to Shreveport as the fire chief. The union there opposed me getting the job. They did everything that they could to keep me from getting the job because they wanted an insider, and they made no secret of it. They told me to my face: “We're going to do everything we can to keep you from getting the job, and if you do get the job, we're going to do everything we can to try to pump you out of the job.”

I went into it thinking, they feel that way now, but once they get to know me and we get a chance to work together we will develop a good relationship. But what happened was they continued to do everything they could to make my life miserable and to try to discredit me.

As I recall, they didn't hold a vote of no confidence in Shreveport, but what they did do was they went to International Association of Fire Firefighters international convention and presented a Motion of Censure against me on the floor for the terrible things I was planning to do in Shreveport.

Of course, this was done with no prior notice. There was no opportunity to respond to what they accused me of doing, and most of the things they were accusing me of were things I hadn't even heard of.

Such as what?

Trying to change the pension system, trying to put in a different promotional system, which I said I was going to try to do if I could but which I had said I couldn't do because the laws of Louisiana wouldn't allow it. I said, “Yes, if it was up to me, we wouldn't do it this way, but it's not up to me so we'll just have to live with it.” So I was accused of trying to change the promotional system, which was all based on seniority.

It was things like that. I had retired firefighters come up to me in stores in Shreveport and say, “I heard what you're planning to do, and you're not going to get away with it!” And I said, “Well, what is it that you've heard?” “We've heard that you're planning to cancel our pensions.” I said, “Even if I wanted to do that, I wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to do it. But why would I want to do it?”

So reality was not a factor in the union's accusations.

I think it's very circumstantial. It depends on the local; it depends on the personalities involved. I wouldn't make a blanket statement that all unions are evil and behave irresponsibly. I just know that what happened to me with that particular local was — looking back on it now — crazy. But it really happened.

What happened after the motion was passed?

I guess there isn't an official black list that they can circulate to fire departments, but I was certainly considered as an enemy to the International Association of Fire Fighters. So after Shreveport, anywhere that I looked to have a fire chief that had a union, they quickly found out that I was not somebody that they wanted to have.

What kind of support did you get from the mayor?

I got good support from the mayor at the time. But he was a lame duck and it happened two or three months before the end of his term. He certainly stood behind me 100%. But the union got very active on the local political scene. They had a 13-way race for mayor, and their candidate won. So about a week after the new mayor came into office I was looking for work.

Did he essentially give you a pink slip or did you read the writing on the wall?

It was essentially the writing on the wall. It was “We're going to give you the option to resign or we're going to have a big confrontation.” And I said, “OK, I'll take the high road. I'm not going to stay here and be the fire chief working for a mayor who doesn't want me.”

Did you ever try to find a position in a town that was non-union?

No, I never [did]. The size of the places where I was interested in being fire chief were always union. I had a couple of offers and some that got close to the offer stage, but in each case the word came down: The union knows that you're looking at this job and they want you to know there's going to be trouble if you go after it seriously….

Some people thrive on conflict. Some people enjoy conflict and that's just a healthy challenge to them. I wasn't looking for conflict. I was looking for someplace to go and do good work together, and that really wasn't available.

The Phoenix Fire Department is considered one of the best in the country, and you certainly came from a good position there.

Yeah, I came from as good a situation as anybody could hope for and went into about as bad a situation as anybody could hope for.

Really, I was thinking that I could take some of things that worked well in Phoenix and take them to Shreveport and say, “Let's just follow the Phoenix model, and we'll all be happy and everyone will like me and we'll have a good time.” But it just didn't transfer.

The politics weren't right. There was so much conflict in the fire department at the time. It was a very unhealthy organization. It has come a long way. Kelvin Cochran is the chief now, and I think they have solved all of those problems and made tremendous progress since I left town.

Was he union-approved before he came on board?

Probably not, but he had strong backing from the mayor and Kelvin is an exceptional individual. So he was the right person in the right place at the right time, and I think he's doing a great job.

Is there any advice that you would pass on to other chiefs — and chief hopefuls — to avoid that situation, what not to do? It doesn't sound like there was much you could do.

Every case is a little bit different. Given the circumstances in mine, I don't think there was much that I could have done differently. I think the key is that you have to be professional; you have to be honest and you have to be true to the profession of being a fire chief. And that's the best that you can do.

Sometimes you're going to run into a situation that no matter how much you try to do the right thing, they're not going to go along with it, and they may want to fight. In that case, there's not much you can do about it. When it happens, then you have to reexamine what you are doing. Make sure that what you are doing is reasonable, professional and ethical and try to make the best of the situation.

Is there a point where you have to think maybe this isn't a good life situation or a good career situation?

You reach a point where if things aren't working, you might just not be the right person for that fire department at that time, and it's probably a lot better for everybody if you move on.…

You have to look at yourself, and it probably makes sense to find some other fire chiefs that you trust and can tell you if you are on the right track or on the wrong track. It takes a lot of courage sometimes to tell somebody he or she is on the wrong track, particularly if it's a friend, but sometimes you have to do that.

Did you try to get together with the union local and get on the same page? Did you call them up and say, “Hey, fellas, let's find some common ground”?

Yeah, I really tried. One of the things that I tried — you know, we had very positive relation with the union in Phoenix, and once a year we would have a labor/management retreat when all the senior staff of the department and the executive board of the union would go off out of town for two or three days and try to work out all of the issues for the year.

So I said to the union president in Shreveport, “Let's go to Phoenix, and we'll sit in with the Phoenix guys and see how it's done. I'll sit in with the management guys, and you sit in with the union guys and maybe we can use that as a catalyst to build a more positive relationship.” Well, that didn't work.

Are there things you would advise people who are considering a job as fire chief of a unionized department to consider?

You can and should take the temperature of the situation before you agree to go anywhere as fire chief. And I was certainly aware of the nature of the problem. I was just naïve enough to think that I could solve it.…

At that time, we just didn't have the magic that Phoenix had and still has. Phoenix is successful because of the fire chief and the team that he has around him, the union and really good leadership in the union, and a city that really wants to have an excellent fire department and is willing to pay for it.

Did you consult Alan Brunacini when this began happening?

Well, before I went he told me not to go. As it went on, he said, “Just do the best you can. Be honest and ethical and true to yourself, and that's the best you can do.”