To readers: I have been traveling and my laptop died, so for various reasons I haven’t been able to comment. I’ll respond when I get home this weekend.
Anyway…https://www.summitdaily.com/news/us-forest-service-hiring-freeze-critiques/
Thanks to Nick Smith for this one from the Summit Daily. Who knew that temps couldn’t be had even with external funding?
“Colorado Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper as well as Colorado Representatives Joe Neguse and Brittany Pettersen penned a letter Monday, Oct. 28, to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack.
In particular, the letter takes issue with the Forest Service applying the hiring freeze not only to positions funded through the federal budget but also to positions supported by local funding.”
In 2023, almost $750,000 in taxpayer funds raised through the Strong Futures Initiative went toward the Forest Service’s seasonal wildfire mitigation and education in Summit County, with much of that money going directly to the federal agency to hire seasonal staff.
“The voters of Summit County passed (the Strong Futures Initiative) because the White River National Forest was so understaffed that these critical functions weren’t getting done,” Summit County Commissioner Tamara Pogue told Summit Daily News last week. “We’ve literally been paying for them because the federal government isn’t doing its job.”
But Forest Service regional press officer Donna Nemeth said that only two positions supported by the Strong Futures Initiative will be hired next summer because they are considered “fire series” employees. The remaining positions supported by those local dollars are “recreational technicians” who focus on fire prevention and education, and currently won’t be hired back next summer, Nemeth said.
Other local governments — including Eagle County, Pitkin County, Chaffee County and the towns of Vail and Aspen — have also provided local funds dedicated to supporting Forest Service seasonal hiring that could be impacted by the hiring freeze.
The congressional delegation wrote in its letter that the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain region, which includes Colorado, “typically accepts millions of dollars from external partners to hire seasonal employees.”
Of course, at a future date, the Forest Service can hire Temps again, but only at the GS-3 level. Budget people can claim a huge savings, with the shrewd downsizing, by clearing out all those higher paid Temps, who moved on to other jobs and other careers.
(because, of course, Temps don’t need any skills to qualify for a GS-3)
The bottom line, literally: “This Memorandum does not create any substantive or procedural right or benefit enforceable by law or equity, nor does it create any private right of action.”
If I were the folks with the bucks, and I wanted work done, I would simply go to a not-for-profit with an agreement and have them hire the temps.
If you were of a skeptical persuasion (which I am not, but I think we need to talk about it) you might think that this temp thing was intentional so all FS work next summer would be done by temps hired via grants. I don’t think the Keystone folks are trying to make money off their 10%, but I am concerned that the Feds have made hiring so difficult that they are giving up. I am also concerned about removing competition from federal (essentially) procurement.
Hi Sharon: Going to “not-for-profits” and having them hiring “temps” often involves taking advantage of illegal immigrants, which the USFS initiated in the late 1970s and almost single-handedly destroyed the domestic reforestation industry in the process. The early 80s depression helped accelerate the process.
Why not go to a legitimate business that pays taxes and hires local people at competitive wages to do the work? Taxpayers have been unwittingly enticing illegal immigrants to work on public lands at an enormous cost for nearly 50 years and no one seems to notice. The immigrants are little more than a modern-day slave trade, and the USFS has been one of the principal beneficiaries for far too long.
It is simply not true that “these are jobs Americans won’t do” — I did it for 20+ years and many of my crews worked for me for 10+ years during that time. Of course, we paid 2-4X higher wages than the migrant casual labor contractors and our employees could afford to rent or even buy homes, rather than living in slave camps. Now we even have taxpayers funding housing developments for the illegals so that people and agencies can continue getting cheap labor and no competition.
All of the multi-million and -billion dollar “not-for-profits” are also the very ones filing lawsuits that have been destroying our forests, rural communities, and wildlife, too, and pay their executives six-figure salaries and expenses. We need to go back to hiring legitimate businesses that pay taxes and are accountable for their work quality is my opinion.
The idea is that this external funding could be used to pay the salary of a permanent employee and the permanent employee would do the work that a temporary would do. That is the situation that the Forest Service is in. Of course, the work of the permanent employee would need to be shifted to do that. There are some cases for exceptions that can be made, but until all of the dust settles on paying for the salary of all permanent employees, those exceptions are going to be pretty rare.
I wonder if that’s legal based on employment law.. you were hired to do one thing, and now we want you to do something else. Perhaps fieldwork that the employee doesn’t want to do, or is in the wrong location for.