Amazon announced last month that revenue forecasts require that it cut staffing at its fulfillment warehouses. “We’re forced to lay off all of our package handlers,” said Jeff Bezos. “They’re our cheapest labor and lowest in our corporate hierarchy so, obviously, they’re the first to go….”
No, that’s not a real Amazon press release. It’s the one the Forest Service would have written if it wanted to explain why it decided to eliminate all of its seasonal employees. These are the 2,500 workers who build and maintain hiking trails, clean campgrounds, staff visitor information centers, survey for wetlands and rare plants and animals, and conduct the field work necessary for scientific research. If you meet a Forest Service employee in the woods, that person is likely a seasonal worker. Should Chief Randy Moore’s decision stand, you won’t be seeing any of them next year.
Of course, it’s unimaginable that Amazon would cut the very workers who do the essential task that make it one of the world’s most successful companies. Yet that’s exactly what Chief Moore is doing — he is gutting the Forest Service of the people who do the day-to-day job of taking care of your national forests.
His reasoning, such as it is, could not be more transparent. He’s chosen to protect feather-bedded senior administrative staff from budget cuts and lay all of the pain on his least powerful employees. He cannot explain (nor has he even tried) how eliminating on-the-ground workers versus cutting fewer senior-level positions best meets the Forest Service’s “Caring for the Land and Serving People” mission. One middle-management GS-11 employee’s annual salary equals four seasonal GS-5 salaries. It takes a special kind of idiocy to cut staff based solely on rank without regard to the effect the cuts have on the organization’s work and mission.
Chief Moore has exempted one flavor of seasonal worker from his across-the-board knife — firefighters. It is now all but official; the U.S. Forest Service has become the U.S. Fire Service. In recognition of that fact, it is time to transfer management of our national forests to the Department of Interior, which continues to employ the seasonal workers essential to stewarding public lands. The U.S. Fire Service can remain behind in Agriculture (or Homeland Security), a shell of its former self, on-call to the responsible federal land agencies when they need someone to put out a fire.
Sincerely,
Andy Stahl
