Pay System For Forest Crews Under Fire Union Wants Portal-To-Portal Wages For Federal Firefighters

The 28 men and women who died battling fires on national forests last year may have looked like firefighters, but the Forest Service calls them “forestry technicians.”

Why?

The Agriculture Department says the term is more accurate given the range of duties performed by the people who make up its fire crews.

A union organizer disputes that.

“If they called them firefighters, they’d have to pay them like firefighters,” said Kenny Harrell, a vice president of the Sacramento-based California Professional Firefighters who fought fires on military bases for 21 years.

The distinction can have deadly consequences, he said.

Relegated to a lower pay scale than their municipal counterparts, some of the federal workers try to make up the difference with long hours on fire lines, Harrell said.

“Because they don’t pay the firefighters when they sleep or eat, the firefighters, by their own choosing, drive themselves way past the time they are supposed to rest or eat,” he said in a telephone interview this past week.

“In effect, they are killing themselves. Come June we’re going to have wild fires again. And they are going to start dying again.”

For years, Harrell has been urging Congress to legislate “portal-to-portal” pay for federal firefighters. That is, paying them from the time they arrive at the fire scene until they leave - keeping them on the clock even when they eat and sleep.

Most non-federal firefighters “are paid from the time they come on duty to the time they get off duty,” George Burke, a spokesman for the International Association of Fire Fighters based here, said this past week.

Agriculture Department and Forest Service officials declined comment on proposals to revise the pay system, which are under review.

“Portal-to-portal” pay was endorsed by an interagency personnel group at a December meeting in Albuquerque, N.M., according to Forest Service records obtained by The Associated Press.

“A decrease in reported injuries and illnesses would be realized as personnel would not be compelled to work excessive hours for additional pay,” said the interagency report on “National Fire Business Management Issues.”

“Overall safety would be improved,” it said.

Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., introduced a bill in Congress earlier this year to move toward the portal-to-portal pay system.

“These men and women work longer hours than other public-sector firefighters yet are paid substantially less,” Sarbanes said in a Senate floor speech.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., is pushing for congressional hearings on a companion bill in the House.

Typical full-time federal firefighters at the pay grade GS-5, step 5, make $7.21 per hour while other Civil Service employees at the same grade and step earn $10.34 per hour, Sarbanes said.

“Adding to this discrepancy is the fact that the average municipal firefighter makes $12.87 per hour,” the senator said.

“Federal firefighters have been treated like second-class citizens and it is time that they receive the fair and equitable pay and benefits they deserve,” Alfred K. Whitehead, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said earlier this month in a statement supporting Sarbanes’ bill.

The matter came to Harrell’s attention in 1991 when his son, Jason, collapsed from exhaustion while fighting a fire on the Trinity National Forest in California.

Jason Harrell had worked nine consecutive days, averaging four hours of sleep a night, his father said.

The senior Harrell intensified his lobbying effort last year after 14 federal firefighters died in Colorado’s Storm King Mountain fire.

An interagency government report said fatigue and “operational period length” played a role in those July 6 deaths near Glenwood Springs, Colo.

Shifts exceeding 12 hours were common for most of the firefighters in the weeks before they died, it said. And some were members of the Western Slope Fire Coordination Center’s helitack crew, which “had worked 26 consecutive days without a day off, with most shifts in that period exceeding 12 hours.”

The Forest Service requires special authorization for anything more than 16 consecutive hours, said a division chief for a ranger district in the West.

But “it’s fairly standard” to exceed the limit, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from the agency.

“During initial attack stages, people may work 24 to 48 hours continuously,” said the division chief.

Only about half of the total Forest Service workforce was qualified to directly support firefighting efforts, said Thomas, who urged the foresters “to prepare more of your people to support fire emergencies when they occur … Firefighter safety comes first on every fire, every time.”

Nearly all Forest Service personnel are involved with some aspect of fire management, though their duties are not limited to firefighting, said Assistant Agriculture Secretary James Lyons, who oversees the Forest Service, in a 1993 letter to Harrell.

“As a result, they are in the biological occupational series in positions such as forestry technician and forester. Often their grades are higher than those in the firefighting series reflecting their broader responsibilities and the need for broader knowledge and skills,” Lyons said.

Agriculture Department spokesman Jim Peterson said the department had no comment beyond Lyons’ letter.

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