Federal firefighters make less than fast-food workers. Congress is stalling on a solution

 

For $13 an hour, you can work in fast food. Or, you could engage in close-quarter combat with the country’s most catastrophic wildfires.

This was the starting salary for federal wildland firefighters until two years ago, when the Biden administration allocated $600m from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to increase entry pay to $15 p/h. The funding was intended to be a “bridge” while lawmakers worked on long-term reform, President Biden said at the time.

Yet a permanent fix remains elusive with Congress more bitterly divided than ever, and the House limping along in even basic tasks like funding the government.

...Some 19,000 firefighters work for the US government, protecting more than a million square miles of land. Unlike municipal or state employees, they deploy to fires anywhere in the country with specialized crews like those who parachute into remote fires (the smokejumpers); tackle fires’ most challenging areas (hotshots), and rappel down into blazes from hovering helicopters (helitack).

But for years many federal firefighters were classed as “forestry technicians,” and often lacked sufficient health care or housing on the job...more