Port Chester’s elected officials might not have thought that a plan to eliminate eight professional firefighter jobs would mean contending with one of most powerful firefighter unions in the country, let alone the state of New York.
But that is exactly what is happening. A bit of Yonkers-style hardball is coming to Port Chester.
Barry McGoey, who heads Firefighters Local 628 in Yonkers, says his 325-member union is fully prepared to pour “tens of thousands of dollars” into a public relations campaign to restore Port Chester’s firefighter jobs — all eight of them. “We’re a brotherhood,” McGoey told me. “We’re probably one of the most active and vital firefighter unions there are, so we take great pride in what we do.”
And one of the things they do is aggressively protect the interests of fellow firefighters, even those outside the City of Hills.
“This is one of the smallest locals there are, only eight members,” McGoey said of the Port Chester union. “They don’t have real resources. So they basically have at their disposal all the resources and manpower of Local 628. That’s the way firefighters are.”