Sponsors (10)
Introduced January 16, 2025 by Alejandro Padilla · Last progress January 16, 2025
The bill substantially raises pay, deployment premiums, and mandatory recovery time to improve pay equity, safety, and retention for federal wildland firefighters, but does so at appreciable near‑term federal cost and with caps, benefit-exclusion rules, and implementation/funding complexities that may limit pay parity and flexibility.
Federal wildland firefighters (Forest Service and DOI) receive higher base pay (grade-based increases replacing GS base pay) that are preserved without interruption and count toward compensation calculations, raising straight pay and support benefits for covered employees.
Deployed federal wildland firefighters and certified incident personnel receive a large daily premium (450% of hourly basic pay) and the law extends comparable premium terms to prevailing-rate Forest Service and Interior employees, materially increasing take-home pay during deployments and creating pay parity across pay systems.
Certified Forest Service and Interior wildland firefighters get mandatory paid rest-and-recuperation (R&R) leave immediately after qualifying deployments (paid at the same rate as annual leave), plus jointly-prescribed uniform policies to limit overtime and protect intermittent schedules—improving safety, fatigue mitigation, and recovery.
Higher base pay, expanded premium pay and guaranteed paid R&R increase federal personnel costs and could raise budgetary pressure on appropriations or require reallocations—meaning greater taxpayer cost or cuts elsewhere.
Caps and special pay-calculation limits (capping prevailing-rate increases at Executive Schedule IV and using a GS-10 Step 10 locality cap for premium calculations) could leave higher-grade and some prevailing-rate employees undercompensated compared with the intent to achieve full pay parity.
The premium deployment pay is excluded from basic pay and certain leave/pay calculations, so employees won't see corresponding increases in retirement accruals, lump-sum leave payments, or other benefits tied to basic pay.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Creates higher base pay for federal wildland firefighters, adds daily incident premium pay and paid rest-and-recuperation leave, and allows a limited $5M fund transfer to continue prior increases.
Creates permanent higher base pay for federal wildland firefighters by replacing General Schedule base rates with special base rates that increase pay by grade (larger increases at lower grades). Establishes a daily incident-response premium pay for deployed wildland firefighters, and a paid rest-and-recuperation annual-leave entitlement to be used immediately after deployments. Also directs limited transfers (up to $5 million) of certain unobligated Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funds to continue prior temporary wildland firefighter pay increases.