Sponsors (2)
The bill increases retirement income and reduces overwork for federal firefighters by including regularly scheduled hours (including overtime) in pay calculations and capping routine workweeks, at the cost of higher taxpayer-funded personnel and retirement expenditures plus significant administrative and implementation burdens for agencies.
Federal firefighters (and other affected federal employees) will see retirement annuities increase because regularly scheduled overtime and all regularly scheduled hours are included in 'rate of basic pay' used to compute benefits.
Federal firefighters will have a clear maximum workweek (capped at 60 hours for routinely scheduled tours), reducing chronic overwork and fatigue and improving firefighter safety and operational readiness.
Aligning pay treatment and establishing a regular workweek should improve recruitment and retention of federal firefighters by making pay and schedules more predictable and equitable.
Taxpayers and the federal budget will face higher long-term costs because higher reported rates of basic pay increase retirement payouts and agencies may need to hire more staff or pay more overtime.
OPM, payroll offices, HR units, and agencies will incur administrative and implementation costs and transitional workload to update payroll/retirement systems, track separation dates, and apply the new rules.
Ambiguities in defining 'regular tour of duty' or incomplete/textual (punctuation-only) edits could produce delays, disputes, or uneven application of retirement calculations for some employees.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Requires inclusion of regularly recurring scheduled overtime in the basic pay used to compute federal firefighters’ retirement annuities and directs OPM to cap the regular workweek (up to a 60-hour average).
Introduced July 28, 2025 by Ruben Gallego · Last progress July 28, 2025
Changes how federal firefighters’ retirement pay is calculated by counting regularly recurring scheduled overtime hours as part of the “rate of basic pay” used to compute annuities. Directs OPM to set regulations (within one year) that define the maximum number of regularly recurring hours in a firefighter’s workweek, capped at an average of 60 hours per week. The change applies to annuities tied to separations that occur more than 60 days after the law takes effect. The goal is to improve pay equity with other public-sector firefighters and to help recruit and retain federal firefighters. Implementation will require agency payroll and retirement systems to record and include recurring overtime hours when computing future retirements, and will likely increase retirement costs for federal agencies and the retirement funds that cover them.