In a meeting in the White House today with FEMA and other federal officials, the subject changed to wildfires, and the President expressed his opinion about the pay of federal firefighters.
From the Washington Post:
“There’s an old expression: God made man. Then he made a few firefighters. They have a higher incidence of severe injuries than police officers do. They are incredibly, incredibly brave at what they do. … And I just realized — I didn’t realize this, I admit — that federal firefighters get paid $13 an hour. That’s going to end in my administration,” he said. “That’s a ridiculously low salary to pay federal firefighters.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters earlier that Biden wanted to meet with federal emergency management officials to discuss preparedness and response efforts given the onset of peak wildfire and storm season.
Federal firefighters get paid a “ridiculously low” $13 an hour — that’s going to end in this admin, @potus tells us during meeting with FEMA. pic.twitter.com/p03FiYSnIg
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) June 22, 2021
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Tom.
This should have been addressed decades ago.The wild land firefighter should have their own GS series and not the 462 forestry tech series.I worked 20 years for the Forest Service as a 462 forestry tech(Firefighter)and left that position.My last 15 years was with DOD as a 081 series federal firefighter happily retired.
Ignorance by federal government is common in matters of the most important when it comes to firefighters lives and the people that need them give them the money ? isn’t that what you people do , or think about till snow comes or you people need a vacation !
What is a “federal firefighter”? . In the mind of most politicians, federal firefighters are those who wear turnouts , breathing apparatus and ride in red fire trucks. Most have no concept of what a wild land firefighter is. There needs to be a better public relations effort by all the advocates to make that clear distinction before any progress will be made.
We will see if the support the IAFF gave him will pay off ! I hope and pray he is honest in this effort to get this done otherwise OUR LANDS will continue to suffer as FS management DOESN’T give a Damn !
If he’s talking to FEMA about it we are sunk. FEMA has nothing to do with wildland firefighting until the fire is out and displaced folks need help. FEMA does not employ forestry techs or rangeland techs to fight fire. It’s the US forest Service, US BLM, US Park Service, US BIA and USFWS that actually fight federal wildland fires, and employ the folks currently being underpaid to do so. Action across agencies to fix problems for the wildland firefighters will have to come from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Agency – By – agency independent “fixes” will make things worse for the folks on the fire line. Reclassifying the fulltime fire folks and doing away with Hazard pay may work well for the full time fire folks. Removal of hazard pay for all of the Collateral Duty Responders (CDRs) in the fed agencies who have non fire jobs as their primary job but do fire as call when needed “militia” will not work. Removal of hazard pay without replacing it with some other incentive for the CDRs will further crash the ranks of the CDRs.
Many times there was a budget that would have given crewmen higher grades and steps but little weasel crewbosses and bureaucrats above them liked to play god with taxpayer money and not deliver higher pay to deserving crewmen.
How exactly does a Crewboss influence the pay rate of a crew member?
We’ll see…the sound of voices calling for higher pay from our leadership within the agencies is deafining! 😉 Just about every Forest Sup. State director, District Ranger/Manager, FMOs of all levels has been saying this for years…………ok……really they haven’t…..but not that POTUS has said it maybe they’ll get on board….its good for the career….
***president biden – employer provided health insurance coverage is needed as well***
as a CA wife, may i say: “fire technician” may have been an appropriate designation decades ago, when wildfire season was two to three months, annually. in CA, the season has evolved into seven to eight months, annually.
wild-land fire fighters are firefighters, and wildfire fighting is a full time job.
our local, state, federal agencies must place wild-land firefighters on a contracted step/range scale, with health benefits, hazard pay, and lateral movement opportunities – like their brothers and sisters in city houses.
firefighters: thank you for your service. you’re safety and wellbeing are constantly in my meditations.
Might want to consider revising the locality rate as well.
Way, way past due for the troops on the fireline!
Be careful what you wish for…they are talking about raising the entre level pay from $13 to $15, but removing hazard pay.
WHO is talking about that?
Months ago I was on a call where a WO FAM HR specialist mentioned something about this. I believe what was said was that if a new WFF job series was made and presumably incorporated the hazardous nature of the work as justification for increased pay, then hazard pay would no longer be allowed. I think this was tied to some related OPM policies.
That paper pushing bean counter and their counterparts in HR and OPM can go ahead try with that route. Fact is if the totality of pay (among other things) doesn’t increase….the recruitment and retention problem doesn’t go away.
Also nothing say that OPM policy can’t be changed in the same legislation or EO that increases hourly wages or job series change.
The Grassroots Wildland Firefighters organization has been very active in recent months, advocating for pay for federal firefighters that is competitive with the companies and agencies that are luring personnel to leave the Federal government to come work for far better pay and benefits. When told about the draft legislation, Kelly Martin, their President, said they have been advocating for elimination of the 25 percent hazard duty pay when working on a fire and a 50 percent increase in base salary, which she thought would be more appropriate than a $10,000 to $20,000 boost in pay. The organization also wants their firefighters who are classified as Forestry or Range Technicians correctly placed into a Wildland Firefighter job series. Ms. Martin said that lower and mid-level firefighters are not managers, so they should not be in a Wildland Fire Manager job series as proposed in the draft legislation.
From your own article, the elimination of Hazard pay and a 50% increase in base.
You don’t make sense. Hazard pay is only on fire incident ONLY. And federal 1% retirement only use the firefighter base salary. Hazard pay roughly 25 % of your base. So federal grade scale rank 8 (captain and above) would be 4 or 5 dollars more on FIRES. What he propose $13 or $15 for every hour. Plus for federal retirement and having stopping relying on hazard pay to make ends meet
Living in a mountain rural community in AZ I know the importance of the brave men and women who are
trying to save our state. Give them a living wage.
Since they are not firefighters but forestry technicians I hope the money ends up in the right spot. If hes making changes maybe he’ll drain some more of the swamp to help pay for it too.
Get it done!!!
I truly hope that this can be accomplished without the typical political mud slinging, name calling etc.
This NEEDS to happen, and I appreciate President Biden taking it on. Now, let us hope we can see it come to fruition from both sides of the aisle.
Let’s see what kinda response this gets from Congress critters like Montana’s Rosendale and Sedition Steve Daines. Hoping for the best. Expecting the worst.