Twenty-five years later, Jerry Cole still remembers the feeling of walking into Rainier Fire District contract bargaining with Rocky Hanes by his side. Today, Cole is mayor of Rainier, but in 1999, he was on the local firefighters union bargaining team and Hanes was secretary of nearby International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 1660 in the Tualatin Valley. Hanes heard Rainier bargaining wasn’t going well, offered help, and drove up to join Cole at the bargaining table. Cole recalls the look of surprise on the face of the management negotiator when Rocky entered the room. It felt to Cole like he’d just been joined by a top-notch litigator. Bargaining ended with a strong contract for the unit.
“He really helped us out when he didn’t have to,” Cole recalls.
That experience with Hanes led Rainier and Clatskanie firefighters to join Local 1660 — a move copied by other small units in the years after. Local 1660 represents nearly 700 firefighters and paramedics: 560 at Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue and the rest at 10 units of two dozen workers or less.
Hanes seemed to have a knack for bargaining. In 2001 when the international union created its IAFF Partnership Education Program to train union officers, he began leading workshops on contract negotiation. He’s served as an instructor for the program ever since.
Last month, at age 50, Hanes completed his final term as president after 26 years leading Local 1660. Fellow firefighters say his impact is incalculable.
“Being a union leader, it’s synonymous with Rocky Hanes,” said Chris Hart, Local 1660’s new president. Hart describes Hanes as an old soul with a “remember where you came from” attitude.
“He’s a perfect example of what a labor leader should be,” Hart said — knowledgeable about labor law, experienced at bargaining contracts, and gifted at spreading that know-how as an instructor with the IAFF’s training program.
Boyhood dreams
Hanes’ career calling began with Johnny and Roy.
A lifelong Clark County resident, Hanes grew up in a union household. His father and grandfather were union bricklayers, and his father was a union officer in Bricklayers Local 1.
“Being a union member and being involved in the union was always going to be a priority of mine,” Hanes said. Just not as a bricklayer.
Inspired by the 1970s television show Emergency! — about the fictional firefighter-paramedic duo Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto — Hanes dreamed of becoming a firefighter. At age 19 he went to work for Tualatin Valley Fire District. He started attending union meetings soon after.
“I wasn’t just going to come to work for 24 hours and go home for two days,” Hanes recalls. “I needed something else to do, so the union was a great way to get involved.”
A few years after joining, Hanes became a shop steward. And a few years after that, in 1999, he was elected president.
Local 1660’s top officers receive stipends but continue to work station shifts. While serving as president, Hanes continued working as a firefighter-paramedic and captain of Station 57. Between shifts or taking a shift or two each month for union affairs, he took care of business for the union.
“We love our job … Most of us didn’t hire on to become union officers. We hired on to be firefighters, and that just kind of morphed into being a union officer,” Hanes said.
Growing the union
With Hanes at the helm, Local 1660 doubled in size, between the new units joining and existing units adding staff. Some of the growth tracked growing population in the communities Local 1660 members serve, but some came from funding increases in ballot measures backed by the union. And some was the result of a change in staffing standards that the union negotiated in collective bargaining agreements.
That’s one of the wins Hanes is proudest of — taking fire engine, truck, and heavy rescue companies to four-person staffing, up from three. In 2001, Local 1660 sent dozens of members to the conference of the National Fire Protection Association, which promotes standards for fire safety. There they helped pass a national recommendation for four-person staffing. That helped the union bargain for four-person staffing in contracts — and get funding through federal grants and voter-approved levies. Four-person staffing makes firefighters and community members safer — and it also adds new good-paying union jobs, Hanes said. TVF&R and Woodburn have moved to the four-person staffing model.
Under Hanes’ leadership, Local 1660 also negotiated shorter workweeks, a drop from 56 hours to 49 hours at TVF&R. Over a 30-year career, that’s equivalent to retiring almost four years early — four years without exposure to carcinogens and traumatic incidents, and four more years to spend time at home with family, Hanes said.
In Hanes’ own family, he brought his kids on trips to IAFF conventions and ended up passing down the union bug he inherited: Today his son is a firefighter and union representative with IAFF Local 27 in Seattle.
Under Hanes’ leadership, Local 1660 also bought an old fire station as its union hall in 2008 and renovated it entirely with union labor.
Hanes is also proud to have helped grow the Northwest Firefighters Relief Association Health Trust, which provides health insurance not just to active members and retirees of Local 1660 but also to police, fire, and dispatch workers at other local municipalities. Quality health care is a particularly high priority for firefighters. They’re in a physically demanding career where workers tend to retire in their 50s — years before Medicare eligibility — and face high rates of cancer, respiratory diseases, and other illnesses due to smoke and chemical exposure. Hanes says about a dozen retirees and active members died from job-related cancers locally over the course of his career.
Time to pass the torch
Hanes knew it would be his last term when he ran for re-election in 2022.
“Our membership is newer and younger, and I think it’s good to get some new energy in there,” Hanes told the Labor Press. “The next group is ready, and so we’re just in a good place to hand-off.”
He won’t disappear. Hanes has two-and-a-half years left before he retires from the fire department, and this spring he plans to run for another term as secretary-treasurer of the Oregon State Fire Fighters Council, the statewide coalition of almost 50 IAFF locals.
“He’s always going to be there for us to lean on,” Local 1660 Second Vice President Lee Trotter said. “He’s been a role model for most of us that have come up — through the union side of things, as well as the fire service.”
If Hanes has advice for the younger generation of union officers, it’s this: “Just remember who we work for, that we’re a bottom-up organization.”
And to all firefighters, Hanes offers this: “We serve our taxpayers. We have to be the best at what we do, because they don’t get a choice on who shows up. They call 9-1-1 and they get whoever’s working. So we better be good.”
