Impacts on Businesses

Federal contracting under Incident Blanket Purchase Agreements, the procurement vehicle used by the government for all VIPR classified resources, present an incredibly risky business model.  Contractors are expected to provide all the equipment, some of which represents hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment, plus insurance, employees and the associated costs of hiring and training them, and the logistical and payroll support to workers for at least a month during the season before payments are made by the government. All of this comes with no guarantee that contractors will even receive resource orders each season. 

The equipment that wildland fire contractors provide is often financed under long-term loans to even have these resources available for wildfire response. Any further administrative burdens placed upon an already vulnerable industry could be the tipping point for many vendors who simply could no longer justify the risks and simply stop providing resources for a service that is critical to the benefit of the public.  Both the threat of needing to turn down a resource order for purely administrative reasons, and the shrinking of the workforce that will result from that threat, could spell disaster to wildland fire contract companies.

Businesses also rely on a unique labor pool to work during fire season. Many small businesses that engage in VIPR contracting do not hire staff year round, or at least only hire some staff seasonally. The workforce is made up of college students, people who work multiple seasonal jobs throughout the year, or people who struggle to hold down regular employment for one reason or another. Often, firefighters will work for a two week period during the fire season because they take time off from career jobs to lend a hand. Firefighters also commonly work for multiple companies during a single fire season. Under MSPA, employees are not eligible to work for a company until they are registered, as an employee for that company. If they are a driver or supervisor, they have to submit fingerprints and a registration packet, which takes several weeks to submit. The fire season could potentially be over before new or temporary employees were eligible to respond to incidents.

MSPA also requires the DOL to maintain a list of all Farm Labor Contractors on a publicly available website. Additionally, each employee is listed on a Farm Labor Contractors Employee website, also available to the public. We view this as an unnecessary invasion of privacy. You can view the registry websites here:

Farm Labor Contractor Listing:

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/agriculture/mspa/farm-labor-contractors

Contract Employee Listing:

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/agriculture/mspa/farm-labor-contractors/employees

There are so many reasons that MSPA simply has no place in the emergency service contracting industry, and its clear that there are no benefits to businesses to implement these policies and restrictions.

Applicability to Wildland Fire 

Fact Sheet #63 – Not Applicable 

29 CFR 500 – Not Applicable 

29 USC 1801 et seq. – Not Applicable 

Bresgal V. Brock – US District Court Oregon – Not Part of Trial 

Bresgal V. Brock – 9th Circuit Court of Appeals – Not Discussed 

Consistent Application of Agricultural Laws – No Consistency 

Possibility for 100% Compliance in Emergency Services – Not Possible 

Employee Protections – No New Protections 

Impacts on Employees – Negative Impacts  

Impacts on Workforce – Negative Impacts 

Impacts on incident Response- Negative Impacts

Impacts on Businesses – Negative Impacts