If the Feds had the resources to fill the positions on THIER teams in R5, they would certainly do it.
From the CWCG IMT Operating Guidelines:
Federal agency employees should be used whenever a permanent IMT vacancy occurs.
Priority for positions/vacancies:
Thank you Travles, that answered my question 
There is an inherent and systemic problem for the Feds in all aspects of their roles and ranks. They do not pay their personnel as well as CalFire or LG, so there becomes a severe retention problem that correspondingly reduces the experienced personnel to fully and adequately staff teams and equipment. Even the CalFire Teams have high quality and experienced LG personnel filling team roles.
What is completely missing within the FS senior leadership is that the CA wildland fire landscape is much different that the remainder of the country and is far more costly to fight. They need to do three things as the starting point to begin fixing this. 1.) Begin paying their personnel at rates that will incentivize retention and build the necessary experience. This will not happen overnight but would be achievable if they were willing to do so. 2.) Treat their personnel as the wildland firefighters that they are not as lower classifications that are not wildland fire class. They are firefighters not forestry technicians! 3.) Recognize that their current retention and experience levels may not allow them to fully staff IMT’s and line supervision roles adequately from within and be willing to continue to use LG, and YES, even volunteer department personnel until such time as their own personnel are capable of staffing these roles.
I will be the very first to say, that I have never been on the Fed side, so this is just one person’s opinion but I have always found that treating people with the respect they deserve and have earned goes a very long way to personnel satisfaction and correspondingly retention.
DozerKeith you hit the nail on the head. My first 3 years as a professional firefighter were with the Feds. I was young and hungry and couldn’t believe I was getting paid to do what I loved, but even then we called it the last legal sweatshop. I moved into the LG world in 1999, and marvel at the the way our federal brothers and sisters are “taken care of”. They work their tails off for sub par pay which includes the lack of P2P, a sub par pension, and mandatory retirement at 57. It’s a travesty that they are only considered firefighters when they are injured or die.
Systematic and inherent are the keys words describing feds in your good post. Thanks.
I’d also throw in incompetent and deer in headlights reactions.
Mhb
Got to read an email from a type 1 IC to his team dated yesterday that if they are assigned they could not pay their members under CFAA. Anyone else hearing this?
That means there is NO team to be had. Look at the rosters, half of the team or more are LG.
Agreed, the question still exists
Could be using local agreements vs CFAA. Also there’s a thought of pairing up Type 2 teams with type 1’s for trading to make all Type 1’s with no LG.
Thought this all got cleared up with the letter that came out? We’ve been told we are good to go thru the end of the year. That everyone will be paid as normal.
Maybe it doesn’t effect your Type 2 team. But that doesn’t make sense.
Yeah, heard about the pairing up but not sure who we were paired with. Didn’t get a lot of info on that subject this year. I think it would be tough to have a type 1 team with no LG at all…you would have a small amount of complete teams in my opinion.
Not to mention you shrink the number of teams by roughly half. As well as the fact that some positions have almost no qualified and available federal employees. I will use MEDL as an example. Of the 11 California teams, most have exclusively LG MEDL members, with a few exceptions.
Wait a second. Is it possible for you to redact parts of the email and post?
FS R5 doesn’t use local agreements to mob LG imt members.
R5 did until a couple of years ago, under pressure from OES. I used to use a FSLA 5 for my IMT assignments, but OES didn’t like it. No reason the FS couldn’t unilaterally go back to them. FWIW, my agency’s local agreement is portal to portal. No difference.
Need to take middle man out
Did it say how they were going to pay there members other than cfaa?
No the IC did not identify how payment would be made. I wish the team member would have forward it to me however he appeared to not want to be identified. I am reaching out to CalOES Chief Marshall and the USFS Ic who wrote it. Was just putting it out there to see if anyone else had seen it. CALFIREBC you opinion is noted.
The feds haven’t paid their bills from last year. If they keep playing stupid games they will find themselves in a precarious position. In the end it’s the citizens and boots on the ground that will suffer the most.
They have not paid the Bill’s, however they also were over billed by some departments. Let’s just the process work and hope both parties can work it out.