The Federal Wildland Fire Service Association

FEDERAL WILDLAND FIRE SERVICE ASSOCIATION P.O. BOX 517 INKOM, IDAHO 83245 PHONE/FAX: (208) 775-4577 WWW.FWFSA.ORG

WRITTEN TESTIMONY PROVIDED BY THE FEDERAL WILDLAND FIRE SERVICE ASSOCIATION ON BEHALF OF FEDERAL WILDLAND FIREFIGHTERS EMPLOYED BY THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE, BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT AND THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

BEFORE THE HOUSE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS & PUBLIC LANDS MARCH 19, 2009

EMPLOYEE MORALE

Dear Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to provide you with an insight into the current morale of wildland firefighters employed by the Forest

Service, Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. The FWFSA is mindful and respectful of the fact that the Committee is meeting to hear testimony on the morale of all

Agency employees. However America’s federal wildland firefighters frequently risk their lives to protect our Nation’s natural resources, its citizens and their real & personal property. They perform their arduous and hazardous duties in some of the most inhospitable locations on the

1 earth and face an enemy that does not play by the rules. How those firefighters feel about their job, their sacrifice and that of their families whom they are away from for weeks at a time, and how they feel about the recognition they receive from their employing agencies as to whom they are and what they do for this Nation, plays an integral role in the firefighter’s ability to be productive, safe and successful while on the fire line.

The men & women who serve this Nation as federal wildland firefighters are truly a different breed. They have long been attracted to this dangerous job for the opportunity to work outdoors, protect the environment and the wide variety of natural resources our citizens enjoy throughout the year. For years, it was enough simply to be outdoors and be a part of nature.

However as we have entered the 21st century, the ability for these firefighters to be able to raise a family while also being fully prepared to face the ever-increasing complexities of wildland firefighting, has become more and more difficult. In turn, these abilities are directly related to the management of the individual agency fire programs by those responsible for developing and implementing fire policy.

Nowhere are these challenges more evident than in the 11 western-most contiguous states where the current economic crisis, coupled with the high-cost of living makes it extremely difficult for federal wildland firefighters…some of the lowest paid professional firefighters in the

Country.

Over the last several years, morale among federal wildland firefighters in all five federal land management agencies has deteriorated significantly for a number of reasons. However, given the fact that the Forest Service is the largest employer of wildland firefighters among the five agencies, and, in our opinion its fire program and the management thereof the most dysfunctional, our testimony will tend to address morale issues facing Forest Service wildland firefighters.

2 The downward spiral of firefighter morale is directly related to the manner in which the fire program has been managed by the Forest Service leadership, inclusive of “Line Officers” and the failure of these leaders to embrace progress and understand that progress is critical for the safety of their firefighters as well as a strong, effective and cost-efficient fire program.

The Agency has simply refused to acknowledge that its fire program and fire personnel must be managed like a true fire organization to meet the complexities of today’s wildfires.

Firefighters continue to be encumbered by archaic pay & personnel policies despite the fact that all land management agencies have been aware of such issues for decades. In fact numerous multi-agency task forces and working groups have not only identified morale issues but have identified a number of solutions, many of which the FWFSA continues to fight for today.

Candidly, the Agency(s) have simply ignored the pleas of their firefighters and have continued to implement and maintain policies that are not only employee-unfriendly, but have led to significant fiscal mismanagement of fire funding and the needless skyrocketing cost of wildfire suppression.

Everyone, from the President of the United States, members of Congress, the public, the press and even Agency leadership refer to these brave men & women as “firefighters.” Yet for some inexplicable reason, the Agency(s) has failed to pursue a true wildland firefighter classification series with OPM which would more accurately reflect the wide variety of duties these employees now perform. Instead, Forest Service wildland firefighters are classified as “Forestry

Technicians” while those with BLM and other agencies are classified as “Range Technicians”.

The issue of classification is the # 1 morale issue of federal wildland firefighters and has been for decades.

The reason for the failure of the Agency to support a wildland firefighter series is as simple as it is outdated. The Agency leadership, inclusive of line officers and others, who have little to no

3 wildfire experience or expertise, continue to manage the FIRE program. In today’s day and age, it is imperative that those with the wildfire experience and expertise ought to be managing the largest fire department in the world! This would mean allowing the Forest Service Fire &

Aviation Management Director (FAM), his/her regional FAM and fire officers to develop and implement consistent fire policies proven to work in today’s most modern fire agencies. Most importantly, it means allowing these fire personnel to be in total control of FIRE funding appropriated by Congress to ensure that such funding is used as expected by Congress and the

American taxpayer.

As FIRE has started to consume a greater portion of the Agency discretionary spending, the

Agency leadership (non-fire) is desperate to maintain its “land management agency” heritage and in doing so has not only prevented the requisite progress necessary for a strong, efficient and effective fire program, but they have also implemented policies that have regressed the

FIRE program in some regions costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Supporting a wildland firefighter classification series and implementing other reforms as sought by the FWFSA would, apparently in the minds of Agency leadership, allow FIRE to “move away” from the land management agency and become its own entity. Thus not supporting a wildland firefighter series and continuing policies that have led to significant losses of federal firefighters and needlessly increased suppression spending would allow the Agency to “rein in” the FIRE program that in some areas, particularly in California and other western states has become too progressive for the likes of Agency leadership. In other words “we’re going to remind you firefighters that you are in fact Forestry & Range Technicians, not firefighters and you are land management agency employees, not employees of a fire department.”

Ironically the same Agency leadership complaining about the increased costs of FIRE are the same leaders and line officers responsible for diverting FIRE funds to pay for non-fire projects,

4 resulting in the need to bring in costly non-federal resources to “fill in the gaps” which in turn increases the suppression costs.

Both personnel and FIRE policies have led to an untenable work atmosphere for wildland firefighters and have created a vicious cycle that not only has had a negative impact on firefighters but also every taxpayer in America. In recent years the Agency, through its USDA leadership has literally misled Congress as to the Agency’s preparedness for upcoming fire seasons. It has continued to hide the fact that FIRE funds for preparedness, as envisioned by the National Fire Plan and hazardous fuels reduction have been diverted by “Line Officers” for non-fire projects.

This in turn has reduced the available preparedness resources in field to help keep fires small and ultimately less costly and thus needlessly increased the risks to the health & safety of our firefighters and those they protect. Further, the inequity in pay & benefits as compared to that paid by the Agency to private contractors and cooperating agency firefighters (state & municipal firefighters) on the same fire have led many federal firefighters to leave the federal sector for better pay and benefits.

Subsequently, the reduced level of preparedness resources as a result of funding misuse coupled with the loss of federal firefighters in all grades and levels of experience & expertise has led to significant gaps in resources on major fires.

In the last several years, the number of requests for federal resources that could not be filled by any particular Geographic Coordination Center (GACC) has increased substantially. Further, with all due respect to Congress, the oversight of Agency FIRE programs and their fiscal management has been sorely lacking. Add to that the misleading testimony of the former

Undersecretary of Agriculture as to Agency preparedness has allowed the Agency(s) to mismanage and waste substantial FIRE dollars appropriated by Congress. This wasteful

5 spending and mismanagement in turn has led to the annual “beg-a-thon” as we call it by the

Agency for hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency supplemental appropriations for suppression.

The resource “gaps” as previously mentioned have to be filled in order to allow the Agency to continue to report to Congress that it puts out 98% of all wild fires on initial attack. Despite this assertion year after year, no real evidence has been provided by the Agency to prove this claim.

With losses of federal firefighters and a lack of preparedness resources as a result of fund diversion, the Agency has developed an over-reliance on significantly more expensive non- federal fire resources including private contractors and cooperators as described previously.

This compensation inequity has become the second most egregious affront to employee morale next to the classification/recognition issue.

On any given wildfire on federal property, the federal government/land management agencies pay significantly more for non-federal resources than they do their own employees. In other words, a federal wildland firefighter on the same fire line as a municipal firefighter is paid significantly less for the same amount of work.

There are a variety of reasons for this inequity, not the least of which is the fact that municipal firefighters have the right to negotiate pay & benefits while federal employees do not. As a result, cooperative agreements between the federal land management agency and the municipal fire agency include salaries for the non-federal resources that are already substantially higher than those of their federal counterparts. In addition to the higher salaries, the federal land management agencies also pay an “administrative fee” to the municipal agency of approximately 21%. Still further back-fill costs are paid and finally, lodging costs are paid for the non-federal resources while more often than not, federal firefighters are required to sleep in tents or on the ground.

6 Perhaps the most glaring example of compensation inequity and a policy that has demoralized federal wildland firefighters for years is the common fire agency compensation policy known as

“portal to portal” or PTP.

PTP simply means an employee is paid for all time from the time they come on duty until the time their tour of duty is completed. In the case of wildland fires on federal property, firefighters from most cooperating agencies are paid by the federal land management agency their already significantly higher salaries for a full 24 hours, inclusive of FLSA overtime. This compensation continues whether the cooperating firefighter is actually fighting fire or resting in fire camp.

On the other hand, the federal land management agency does not compensate its own firefighters for all hours in any given 24 hour period on the very same assignment. Federal wildland firefighters are “taken off the clock” for anywhere from 8-12 hours or more in the same

24 hour period that their very own employer is paying cooperating firefighters for a full 24 hour period, inclusive of overtime at already significantly higher rates of pay.

The PTP policy, added to the other costs associated with “for profit” contractors and cooperating fire agencies has led to the skyrocketing costs of wildfire suppression over the last several years and has led to serious morale issues among federal firefighters. It remains unconscionable that the federal land management agencies would continue to compensate non-federal resources in a manner that they do not compensate their very own employees.

While most of the federal wildland firefighters who have left the federal service have done so for better pay and benefits, most have indicated that they would have preferred to stay with the federal agency. However all expressed a feeling that the Agency(s) simply doesn’t give a damn about its firefighters.

Without major reforms to personnel & pay policies and the organizational structure of land management agency fire programs, the Agencies will continue to experience an exodus of well

7 trained and highly tenured firefighters to non-federal fire agencies. These losses are not just an

“entry level” problem as the Forest Service has previously testified to. Many of those lost had

10, 15 even 20+ years of experience in the federal sector that simply cannot be replaced.

The investment made by America’s taxpayers in these employees’s training over the years has been lost. Incredibly just last year, the Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources & the Environment acknowledged during congressional testimony that the Forest Service appeared to be “in the business of training state & municipal wildland firefighters.” He further dismissed any concern about the employee losses by saying that they would still be on the federal wildland fire lines, just “in a different color uniform.” What he failed to mention was that while they may in fact return to the fire lines of federal wildfires, they would now cost the taxpayer 3-5 times as much as they were when they were federal employees.

In addition to the firefighters discussed herein, many land management agency employees support FIRE operations although “firefighting” is not their primary occupation. The Forest

Service has long identified these employees as the “militia” and continues to encourage all

Forest Service employees to support the FIRE program.

The outdated FIRE policies and the internal Agency politics pitting FIRE against other programs has also negatively impacted the morale of those considered to be part of the militia to the point that many no longer take fire assignments that will keep them away from their families for days on end and place them in a non-pay status for much of the assignment contrary, we believe, to the intent of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, we sincerely appreciate the opportunity to provide some insight into the current morale of our Nation’s federal wildland firefighters and hope we have not only identified the causes of this deterioration of morale but have also offered some ideas as to how the morale of these firefighters could be dramatically restored.

8 Some in Congress have already taken the lead in holding the Forest Service and other land management agencies accountable for the long-standing issues facing their firefighters. Further, the FWFSA has crafted a legislative “discussion draft” entitled the National Wildfire

Infrastructure Improvement & Cost Containment Act of 2009 and we are currently meeting with House & Senate members this week (March 16-20) seeking its introduction. The bill would not only strengthen the infrastructure of the federal wildland firefighting resources, it would also lead to significant savings in wildfire suppression costs and create a more effective and cost- efficient FIRE program.

We thank you for your time and interest in this issue and look forward to any questions you may have. Further information can be obtained by contacting our Business Manager Casey Judd at [email protected] or by phone at 208-775-4577.

Respectfully Submitted:

The Federal Wildland Fire Service Association