Firefighters are leaving the U.S. Forest Service for better pay and benefits
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
It’s a highly coveted position.
The only issue is that their criminal record can prevent them from working in the fire service after release.
If we can fix that, I see no issue with it as a valuable, coveted career training program.
They get something like $26/day on the low end, and their work earns time-served credits, meaning every day spent on a crew counts for 2 extra days served.
They also get full-on vocational training, and are eligible for firefighter jobs when they get out. It is, among other things, a rehabilitation program.
I'd hardly call it slavery, and it has a number of very fair perks, esp. considering that the person is a felon. I lived in San Diego for a little and the general consensus was that the prisoners worked hard and were competent -- nothing else to do but train.
I'm in the Midwest and the exodus we experienced in volunteer firefighting is extremely worrying, on top of that a recent city board meeting went side ways when a hot headed alderman couldn't keep his professionalism in check and blasted 2 recently hired firefighters because they lived outside the 25 mile zone (27, 29 respectfully), due to housing issues. Home fires have only increased since 2020, yet we twiddle our thumbs for proper pay and empowering our fire services that need it.
The police got their huge increase in budgets during 2020-2022, but I haven't heard the same for firefighters. Weird considering it's a popular service, I mean I'm not aware of a firefighter equivalent to "FTP".
In many rural areas; it's not even a for pay job;
It's volunteer outside most major cities; in Alabama and Georgia. It's not even part of sales or property taxes here; the volunteer fire department (with no employees, much less a paid head of marketing or collections) has to market to the community.
In one are of Tennessee they would rescue people but let structures burn if they did not subscribe. This was an unpopular policy and they now bill non-subscribers for fire service. Of course people who had their house catch on fire may not be the best financial status and any lien the FD gets will be on some ruins.
https://www.nwtntoday.com/2012/02/17/fire-response-policy-in...
Basically a bulldozer-sized device that can light and extinguish fires in a controlled manner, for prescribed burns. It also filters the produced smoke.
PG&E is trying it in California: https://www.pgecurrents.com/articles/3762-pg-e-demos-high-te... (pic)
Out here in the prairie state, we could use something like that at half the size or even smaller. A lot of native plant restoration and invasive species management involves burning, and a lot of the areas are small lots interspersed with housing developments. In fact, a lot of people dedicate portions of their yard to prairie grasses instead of regular grass. And especially on private property, people just set things on fire all by themselves in the springtime.
A relatively cheap service that brings in one of these things would probably be a lot better.
>USFS firefighter pay is dictated by the federal pay scale, where most start at the GS-3 level and where pay tops out at around $31,000 annually for full-time employees. By comparison, a first-year firefighter with Cal Fire makes nearly double that amount.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/struggling-federal...
More likely, there is a bit of focused lobbying being done to suborn the few decisionmakers involved with this, so that a company that contracts firefighting services to the government can grow their contract.
I don't know exactly how it works in California. I know there is a "California Conservation Camp" program that pays inmates $2.90 to $5.12 per day while in the camps, and $1.4 per hour fighting fires, but I don't know if they work with only state prisons or if private prisons get in on that too.
Maybe the cost savings there are enough to drive this dynamic.
The recent railroad strike fiasco was a perfect example of how things are really ran.
Doesn't seem son hard...
https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2015/02/17000-federal-e...
Paying the guys keeping the burning parts of your country in check enough, so that they keep doing it seems like it would be up there with "maintaining roads".
No it didn’t. It technically sent $billions less to Ukraine due to the incorrect valuation being used for the mostly obsolete military equipment we’re lend leasing Ukraine.[1] It just means there’s $6.2B more worth of obsolete equipment that can be sent under existing authorization. Technically we’re ridding ourselves of the massive cost of decommissioning the equipment, getting valuable real-world intel on system performance and enemy capabilities, while knee capping one of our major geopolitical adversaries and our only significant marginal cost is shipping! This is the financial deal of the century!
1. https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-weapons-surplu...
All the numbers thrown around about the lend lease program are military accounting and do not impose almost any actual costs to the US tax payer, basically just the cost of shipping which is minuscule compared to the Military budget let alone Entitlements. Therefore, the comparison of essentially military funny-money and actual Entitlement increases is just hyper-partisan nonsense.
We don't have $6.2B worth as it's military accounting value, not actual value. There are no buyers for this obsolete equipment apart from Ukraine, and no longer any use for the US military. The money put into the equipment is a sunken cost and the US Gov has to incur the ongoing cost of storage or decommissioning. This entire controversy is based on a seemingly willful misunderstanding of why the military gives obsolete equipment a monetary label and then an equivocation of that monetary value label with actual money.
Pretending to care about “the beast” means you make sure firefighters make less than McDonald’s managers, while “supporting the troops” by making sure your local defense contractors continue to get paid for making overpriced bolts or whatever.
per the article
no shortage of high-end golf clubs to visit while thinking about wages, here in the USA
Schools have increasingly dropped swimming pools and programs in favor of football and baseball, because that's what parents want. School swim programs used to be one of the biggest "drivers" of summer lifeguards, as kids could easily pass the lifeguard swim tests and get themselves what was a cool summer gig.
At the same time, the lifeguard gig wasn't really a high paying job, usually a dollar or two above minimum wage. This was fine decades ago, but not in 2023.
We also instituted training requirements on them because the municipality will get sued if that lifeguard's actions resulted in an injury or death and they didn't have those X hours of training.
Nowadays, that same kid not only doesn't know how to swim, but working in a Amazon Warehouse or Walmart pays more and safer for that pay.
The shortage is after decades of decisions building up to a crux.