#Merica has spoken and i’m beyond worried for our troops getting the upgrade in pay & resources/support we all know they’ve needed. Seems to me that since we are now transitioning into a “burn it to the ground” phase in politics - it just does not seem like now will be that time either. The only increases if any will come in the form of funding for more work to be done - not funding to make work environments better for boots on the ground or in the skies. Troubling to say the least and i just don’t see anyone in the proposed incoming cabinet championing this cause for us in the near term. Hopefully i’m proven wrong soon…
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No pay upgrade is coming. Employees will most likely either pay more into their benefit package and or lose some benefit’s all together. I would also plan on a big reduction in force happening like in the early 80’s. If you haven’t started working on your resume for other agencies, then I would ASAP. The Forest Service will run its remaining employees into the ground! There do more with less approach that they adopted years ago and continue to chase out its good employees or mentally/physically break the ones left hoping to make it to retirement. Funny thing is that retirement might not be their once you go to collect it. If you value your personnel time and family time, then look elsewhere and stop believing the Feds value you!
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All you clowns think oh no, they gonna cut our pay and fire us all. Honestly the government needs to cut programs and #nonessential employees. Guess what, we are essential. Things may get a little rocky but let’s shake this bitch up. FedFire?
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Agree! For example everyone complains about the hiring process and it being inefficient. Those inefficiencies may now be getting fixed. A little birdie told me the new admin transition team is already looking into standardizing federal firefighting into 1 org.Not to mention, now I can get support from the folks that respond to me…” sorry I can’t help with that. I’m teleworking”. Get to work !
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Probably right. Those support positions likely will be under a freeze or going away and good supervisors like yourself will be doing most of it, with the promise of better tech and AI systems to do your admin work.
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Hang in there everyone. Do know that many people from fire departments around the country, at local and state levels support federal wildland firefighters.
MHB
Darkest before the dawn
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Yeah, about that. Well let’s hope we go from “hey do you want to quit?” to check out this Federal wildland fire agency where you get treated, paid and recognized as a professional that believes in the mission. Regardless, im sure Elon’s offer will tip over many others decision to go to CAL FiRE and get two paychecks from two different agencies for 8 months.
Personally this offer is no good for me. And I’m not going to get wrapped around the axel on it. However, this is just another pressure/stress put on the average firefighter trying to raise a family. It just raises a flag to an entry employee of “why should I work here with so much uncertainty”
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Did DOGE send notifications to Federal Firefighters? Or is it a voluntary notice for all Fed Agencies?
On that note, I have some DOI friends that have been screenshotting and Sharing some of the emails coming from the White House on DEI, man, full throttle!
Thanks
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Hearing Job offers are being rescinded.
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Hard to rake the forest without rakers….
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offers are being rescinded, which really just means “on hold” We have 2 folks with start dates of 2/9 that have been told not to report on 2/9. This is hopefully just temporary. seems this is across the board as I know of Forest supervisors and District Rangers who also have had their offers rescinded, but are being told that just means on hold, not cancelled. We have a hard enough time with hiring/retention, we at least need the folks who have been hired(through an exhaustive process) to be allowed to show up for work for a start date they were given weeks ago.
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Maybe they are going to handle the job with the infamous “AI”. 
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Yeah, robotic feller bunchers and drone-deployed hoselays will surely render all manual labor redundant and we can all fight fire from the GIS trailer. ;^>
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My Congressman declared Wildland Firefighters were unskilled labor
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I liked this in a “I don’t like this”.
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Sounds like you need a new congressman, possibly one with prior wildland fire experience.
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There will not be a GIS trailer, as there won’t be any actual firefighters to need maps. The information will just be transferred from ai machine to ai machine.
One thing to remember about computers, they are originally programmed by humans with some bias or another.
As they said many years ago " Garbage in, garbage out ".
ai may be helpful, but at the expense of human thought and action, I personally am very leery of it.
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We have tried
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