Defense Bill Scores Big Win for DoD Fire Fighters

December 15, 2007 -- Congress is on the verge of passing landmark legislation containing several important protections for federal fire fighters who protect military installations. The FY ’08 Defense Authorization (HR 1585) reinstates important DoD employee protections, repeals the $400 cap on the DoD uniform allowance, reinvests mutual aid reimbursements back into DoD fire service accounts, and kills a Bush administration proposal to privatize military fire fighting.

“This legislation is a tremendous win for the nation’s federal fire fighters,” says IAFF 16th District Vice President Jim Johnson. “Reforming NSPS has been a long and difficult road, but working together we were able to restore the rights that Defense employees have long enjoyed.”

The final version of the bill includes groundbreaking reforms to reign in the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), a personnel system that – until now – undermined collective bargaining and appeal rights for all DoD civilian employees. As a member of the United DoD Workers Coalition (UDWC) – a coalition comprised of 36 labor organizations representing 750,000 DoD civilian employees – the IAFF joined forces with congressional allies and the labor community to restructure NSPS and restore collective bargaining and appeal rights for DoD fire fighters and their civilian counterparts.

In addition to working in the UDWC coalition on the NSPS issue, the IAFF played the leading role on several lower profile issues affecting DoD fire fighters. For the first time in 18 years, the bill lifts the cap on uniform allowances for all DoD civilian employees, including DoD fire fighters. DVP Johnson is already working with DoD to implement a significant increase in the uniform allowance.

The bill also includes a critical provision to force DoD to reinvest reimbursements paid under mutual aid agreements back into DoD fire and emergency services accounts instead of funneling those funds away from the fire service. The recent California wildfires helped to highlight a long simmering problem of DoD fire departments expending critical resources during mutual aid responses, but never receiving any of the reimbursement funds paid by communities to DoD.

Finally, the bill omits President Bush’s proposal to greatly expand the current narrow exemptions to the ban on contracting out fire protection. Bush has long sought to contract out fire fighting at DoD facilities, and each year tries to weaken the ban on contracting out that Congress enacted more than two decades ago.

The legislation passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly, and has also passed the Senate. Although President Bush has expressed opposition to many of the provisions of the bill, he is likely to sign it into law before the end of the year.