§5545c Incident Response Premium Pay for Employees Engaged in Wildland Firefighting

Summary

It gives extra pay to Forest Service and Interior employees who fight wildland fires or are certified to do incident duties when they are sent to certain incidents. Covered employee = a Forest Service or Interior worker who is a wildland firefighter or certified to perform incident-related duties. Qualifying incident = a wildfire, a planned prescribed fire, a “severity incident” (when staff are pre-positioned because of high fire risk), or a similar event the Secretaries decide; it does not include an initial response that is contained within 36 hours. An employee is eligible when deployed away from their official duty station, or when kept at their station but assigned to an incident-adjacent camp or field location. For each day a covered employee meets these rules, they get a daily premium equal to 450% of their hourly basic pay, rounded to the nearest cent. That daily pay cannot exceed the daily rate for step 10 of GS–10 for employees whose basic pay is higher, and no one may receive more than $9,000 in a calendar year. The Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior must compare average pay by grade for fiscal years 2023 and 2024 and publish a report within 180 days after one year from the law’s effective date. After the report, the Secretaries, with the Office of Personnel Management if needed, may adjust the premium to better match 2023 pay and must notify the listed congressional committees within 3 days of any final change. This extra pay is not part of basic pay and cannot be used to figure leave lump-sums, workers’ compensation, pay for other paid leave when the premium doesn’t apply, or minimum wage and overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act.