OREGON — During a press conference to discuss the federal $1.5 trillion "Omnibus" spending bill's impacts in Oregon, Sen. Jeff Merkley(D-Oregon) boasted appropriations for drought relief, housing grants and wildfire mitigation, including forest management and a wildland firefighter wage increase that would bring the minimum hourly to $15.
When asked how that base wage was determined to be competitive given inflation placing fast-food workers' base wages in many areas at least two or three dollars above that figure, Merkley noted that the determination was made before inflation began to spike.
"The challenge in the past has been the wages have been far lower than 15 dollars, 15 dollars sounded like a significant increase at the time we undertook this," he said noting that the line item was brought up by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) who had pointed out that state wildland firefighters were paid considerably more than their counterparts employed by the federal government.
"A lot of people want to work on the fire fighting teams, so some may choose and say 'hey I can earn that much now working at a fast-food joint,' but maybe it's not full-time, maybe there is no overtime and here we have improved wages for firefighting," he said. "More people will make this a significant longer-term engagement that will improve the quality of our fire fighting crews. and improve our recruitment."
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