After years of anxiety, a pay boost for wildland firefighters approved in 2021 was just permanently signed into law.
U.S. lawmakers avoided a government shutdown Friday night after they approved the “American Relief Act” federal budget. As part of the government funding, it also approved the 2025 Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which boosted firefighter pay.
The act increases wildland firefighters’ special hourly base rates depending on an employee’s GS, or General Schedule, level. The increases include:
- GS–1, 42 percent
- GS–2, 39 percent
- GS–3, 36 percent
- GS–4, 33 percent
- GS–5, 30 percent
- GS–6, 27 percent
- GS–7, 24 percent
- GS–8, 21 percent
- GS–9, 18 percent
- GS–10, 15 percent
- GS–11, 12 percent
- GS–12, 9 percent
- GS–13, 6 percent
- GS–14, 3 percent
- GS–15, 1.5 percent
It also requires firefighters to receive premium pay for instances when they’re deployed to wildfires. The daily pay is equal to 450% of one hour’s wages when they’re responding to an incident outside of their official duties or assigned to a separate fire camp.
The pay boost has been a source of anxiety for the nation’s wildland firefighting force not long after the Biden Administration approved a $20,000 retention bonus in 2021. The bonus was only supplemental and legislators intended to enact a permanent pay increase.
That boost wasn’t made into reality until Friday night, majorly due to the legislative and lobbying efforts of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters advocacy group.
“I feel comforted by the fact that House Republicans included the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act in the House Interior Appropriations bill and that the Senate is there to match right alongside,” Jonathon Golden, a member of Grassroots, previously told WildfireToday. “My thought is that when we see a final Fiscal Year 2025 budget, we will also see some version of WFPPA that will make into law a higher pay for wildland firefighters.”
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: After years of anxiety, U.S. wildland firefighter pay boost may finally become permanent in 2025
Depending on where and how long you work. If you work in the winter and the summer, it’s hard to say which will be more, but my $800 monthly cut this winter is pretty painful. Under $3000 a month is hard to live on. It will take a lot of OT this summer to make that up. And our summer work is very hard, we work 21 days before we have a day off. Most people don’t know that. Our nutrition is poor, showers are few, and we don’t get much sleep. That doesn’t even count the dangers of fire blow ups, falling trees, erratic winds, and the other dangerous positions we put ourselves in to put out a fire. Yeah, permanent is great, but they sure didn’t think this one out.
While grateful for this win, I am anxious to see what this does to our base checks. The permanent raise is significant, however, also significantly less than the $20k boost we have been receiving for the last few years. Once TSP and taxes start effecting our base take home, our checks will be far less than they are now. Although I know fire assignments will make up for most of this difference, it seems winter months will still be a major struggle for most of us, living check to check. None the less, it will be far less embarrassing, while trying to recruit at events with local and state departments.
FoxtrotEcho, I’m not sure if you are permanent employee or not, but yes the $20k was great but the new pay scale will greatly benefit the younger firefighters in the sense they will make more in overtime and their high three for retirement will be huge. People assume the $20k was awesome, but in the long run this will be huge for folks with a higher OT rate as well as a high three that computes into your pension when you retire. Folks need to do the long term math and not just look at the short term $20k bump and say their checks will be smaller. Simple math really and folks will see a greater return in the long run.
Fantatstic news, amidst a sea of changes in public land management. Beneficial on many levels…recruitment, retention, careers, families, job satisfaction, you name it. Those of us who began their careers back in the 1970s and 80s can vividly remember making (roughly) $3.50/hour base pay, and speaking for myself, that was just fine at the time.
The “Incident Response Premium Pay” is an added bonus; paid for each day. When I think back on the number of qualifying incidents that I was assigned, the numbers add up substantially.
According to https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ in 1970 – 3.50$ / hr is equivalent to 28.78$ / hr today. Currently, firefighters start at 15$ / hr.
Sorta a lost cause as there aren’t many firefighters left after the budget cuts and mass firings and the hiring freeze
But, for the few remaining, looks like you will really be earning that pay
They did not fire any firefighters, not sure where your getting your infromation.
OutOfThisWorld, you obviously don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. There weren’t any significant losses due to the mass firings or the hiring freeze and if anything, we are looking better than we have for a few years especially in the BLM.
And great points Tordog, people need to look at the long term. While this maybe isn’t a pay bump that’s life changing, it’s a step in the right direction for the folks actually doing the work.