Response to NFFE Inquiry to the Field on GS-0401 FPM Log 80

I am currently working in Region 3. I am in a 401 position which I meet through a college degree. However the 401 issue is affecting our forest in negative ways due to the removal of in-house courses.

We have had three FMO jobs flown as 401. I don't know how many people applied for my job here but I do know that the both [two Districts] flew their positions numerous times before they got enough applicants to have a viable cert. For one job I was on the hiring panel and one candidate (there were only 3 on the cert) was determined he did not actually have enough credits to qualify for the 401 so he was dropped.

One District has also had a GS-9-401 Fuels AFMO vacant since I got to the Forest in May 2006. Because this position was flown 401 it disqualified the interested applicants on the Forest and had no outside interest thus they have been unable to fill the position and are now advertising it as a 462 series.

We just lost our Dispatch center manager to another Forest because we flew his position (this was an upgrade) as 401 believing that he qualified and after HCM got through with his credits he no longer meets 401 quals. Thus he applied for another Forest that flew their manager position as 401/462. Now we are flying our position as a GS-401/462-10/11.

We also have many employees on this forest who we have been sending to training to get qualified for 401 who are good employees that are ready to move into AFMO and FMO jobs but don't qualify for 401 jobs. One individual who is currently an AFMO was determined to not have enough credits now with the new rules and he had to get through another class in order to apply for FMO jobs. This is having a negative impact on morale and budgets because money we spent on getting people to an NWCG course that counted for credits are no longer viable and we are now having to send these employees to college courses basically tripling our training costs for our employees who want to be in positions that are 401 and extending the amount of time they have to wait to compete for promotions. This again is demeaning to the employees who by no fault of their own are being penalized because the Forest Service leadership didn't consult with OPM. Employees have developed career training paths to get themselves to the next level only to find out the target moved and they need to aim again and hope it doesn't move again.

I guess my soap box is this. If District level IFPM positions don't have to meet IFPM standards until October 2013, why can't we hire "unqualified", by educational standards, employees into these positions and give them until that date to get qualified or be removed. I think the Forest Service and OPM really need to take a look at what is the intent of IFPM and 401. I think getting more employees formal education is a benefit to both the employees and the agency. However, we shouldn't narrow our options to just college courses. This is great for developing a more professional workforce but they don't cover many things that are important for our employees to perform their jobs safely and effectively. I do think we need to keep some college course requirements especially since so many Colleges and Universities have gone to the trouble to create some courses for us. Maybe we should give recruitment/retention bonuses to those of us who have taken our own initiative to get college degrees and who now watch others getting the government to pay for their educations.

Second I think that we need to create our own series for recruitment and retention purposes. Calling our Firefighters, Forestry Technicians, is archaic and confusing to those who want to come into the Forest Service as Firefighters. I get many calls through the winter months from individuals trying to apply for Fire jobs. They try to search for fire positions in USAJobs, but come up empty because if you try to look up firefighter in the series list it shows up as 0081. If you do a general search you get announcements for series 0081, 0462, 0455. We also need to do away with AVUE. I can't count the number of people who have applied for jobs only to find out they didn't qualify because they checked the wrong box somewhere along the line. This has happened to myself as well as people applying for temporary jobs on up to District Ranger positions. Again this is another morale killer because we can't even figure out how to apply for jobs within our own agency.

1 Response to NFFE Inquiry to the Field on GS-0401 FPM Log 80

The third thing our leadership needs to fix is our personnel problems. For the first time in my 17 year career (I am also a second generation employee) I am embarrassed to recruit people to come work for our agency. I have employees I haven't been able to get paid, who have had to fill out security clearance forms multiple times, whose promotions haven't been processed, whose annual leave checks at the end of a season haven't been processed, who lost out on a job offer because a personnel specialist didn't count a 120 promotion and determined they didn't have time in grade to qualify after the person was already selected for the job. I myself have started trying to figure out how I can still be a member of the firefighting community and not be a Forest Service employee because all our leadership seems to care about is politics, Aglearn, outsourcing, and not what is good for our employees and the agency as a whole. I once had a supervisor who would thank his temporary employees and the others he supervised on a daily basis, because if there wasn't a need to supervise he wouldn't have a job. I think the W.O needs to think about this concept also. Most employees are working in spite of our leadership not because of it.