I agree too that a municipal employee operation would have been preferable to a private operation, but the reality is that municipalities have been getting so beat up over public employee contracts and pensions that they are gun shy over the prospects of having yet another public employee union to deal with. One of the main issues that the city did not want was that it did not want to deal with any union. It did not want to deal with contracts, pensions and benefits, grievances, etc. The company that took the contract employs only at-will employees, meaning they could be let go for any reason, or no reason at all. No union protections, no grievance procedures, no pre-negotiated salary increases, nothing. These dispatchers will be earning a fraction of what surrounding publicly employed dispatchers will earn. The winners here will be; 1) the company, because they're in it to make money, and 2) the city because they just pay the contracted rate and relieve themselves of all employee and long term contract issues, benefits, problematic employees, etc. The people who are getting the short end of the stick are the employees who are going to earn sub standard wages, and who will have to work under deplorable working conditions where they face the potential for termination for any reason what so ever. If this whole privatization experiment takes off, publicly employed dispatchers are going to start feeling the pain as more and more municipalities chip away at their salary and bennies, or even decide themselves to eliminate and privatize their own dispatch centers. I sure hope I'm wrong, but I think we're seeing the writing on the walls this one.