Chicago upsets FF applicants

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City upsets firefighter applicants

Age restriction bars many from new test

By Gary Washburn

Chicago Tribune staff reporter

Published December 26, 2005

After he passed the last employment exam given by the Chicago Fire Department in 1995, Marc Fisher waited patiently for the call to report for training.

But the notification never came. And now, it never will.

The department is throwing out the hiring list and giving its first test in more than a decade next spring.

Fisher would be happy to compete for a spot again. But at age 38, he has been told he is too old to qualify.

"I am really disappointed and angry," he said. "It is really appalling. ... If I was a buddy of some alderman, I'm sure I could have figured out a way of getting on."

"I really am upset," said Angel Morales, 37, another candidate whose dream to be a firefighter has disappeared with the city's adoption of a cutoff age of 35. "You do everything you can to live according to what society wants you to do. You pay your taxes. You don't get into trouble. And something like this comes along. It's not fair."

Fisher and Morales have a lot of company. About 17,000 men and women out of 20,000 who passed the '95 test have not been called. Many are now older than 35.

The City Council in 2000 approved an ordinance requiring firefighters and police officers to retire at age 63, taking advantage of a law that applies to municipal public safety employees passed several years before by Congress, after earlier court rulings that had banned such age limits.

The same ordinance also established age maximums for hiring. The council set an age limit of 40 for the Police Department. But for the Fire Department, which historically has had a much easier time attracting an adequate number of qualified recruits, it made the cutoff 35.

The 2006 exam will be the first in which the new standard will be applied.

Firefighter jobs are highly coveted. Starting salary is about $40,000 a year, with a raise after six months, and pension and medical benefits are considered excellent. Because firefighters, by contract, work a schedule of 24 hours on duty, 48 hours off, many are able to supplement their incomes by working second jobs.

Turnover in the department is limited because so many firefighters work full careers through to retirement.

But physical demands are only one of the reasons the city set the age limit for new hires. Officials also wanted to ensure longevity on the job after investing in candidate training, and they believed older candidates tend to be more set in their ways than younger ones.

Now Morales is thinking about taking the test to become a Chicago police officer.

But Fisher is not willing to give up his dream quite so easily. His sister, who lives in Atlanta, has told him that the Georgia city does not have a hiring-age maximum for firefighters. And he is going to check it out.

"I would love to stay in Chicago because I was born and raised here," he said. "But if I have to leave because someone will give me a chance to do what I want to do, I will [take] it."