Sponsors (10)
The bill substantially raises pay, paid rest, and safety protections for wildland firefighters—improving recruitment, retention, and worker safety—while creating significant new and recurring federal costs, implementing caps and discretionary rules that may leave some workers behind, and diverting limited IIJA funds from other uses.
Federal wildland firefighters (permanent and seasonal) receive substantially higher pay during deployments and a raised base pay—combining grade-specific base increases (up to ~42%) and a large deployed premium—boosting take-home pay, recruitment, and retention.
Prevailing-rate (wage) wildland firefighters at USDA and Interior become eligible for comparable base and premium pay increases, reducing pay-system inequities between wage and GS employees.
Wildland firefighters receive paid rest-and-recovery (R&R) time after deployments and optional limits on average work hours, improving health and safety by reducing fatigue and ensuring intermittent workers are paid during R&R.
The bill creates substantial new and mandatory personnel and premium-pay expenses for federal agencies, increasing federal spending and budgetary pressure that may require offsets or higher taxpayer costs.
Redirecting up to $5 million of unobligated IIJA Title VI funds to pay increases reduces funds available for other infrastructure or IIJA priorities and sets a precedent for bypassing original funding restrictions.
Several statutory caps (e.g., wage-rate increases tied to Executive Schedule level IV, $9,000 annual premium cap, and GS-10 step-10 locality cap) limit how much some employees can benefit—leaving higher-paid or frequent-responding employees undercompensated relative to the stated increases.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Establishes higher special base pay by GS grade for federal wildland firefighters, creates a daily incident premium (450% of hourly pay), adds paid R&R leave, and authorizes a $5M transfer to continue base increases.
Introduced January 16, 2025 by Alejandro Padilla · Last progress January 16, 2025
Creates higher, permanent base pay for federal wildland firefighters by replacing General Schedule base rates with grade-specific “special base rates” and requires similar increases for prevailing rate (wage) firefighters. Establishes a large daily incident response premium for deployed wildland firefighters, creates paid rest-and-recuperation (R&R) leave for deployments, and authorizes a limited transfer of unobligated infrastructure funds to continue the temporary base-pay increases. Applies to Forest Service and Department of the Interior employees whose duties primarily involve wildland fire response; sets percentage pay increases by GS grade, makes the special base rate count as basic pay for all purposes, defines eligibility and computation rules for a daily incident response premium (with a cap tied to the GS-10 step 10 rate for higher-paid employees), and gives agency Secretaries significant discretion to adopt implementing policies (including how to raise prevailing-rate wages and how to administer R&R leave).