California Assemblyman Isaac Bryan proposed legislation that would raise the pay for incarcerated firefighters who have been battling the Los Angeles wildfires.
Incarcerated firefighters earn $5.80 to $10.24 per day, with an extra $1 per hour if assigned to an active emergency, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. For one 24-hour shift during an active emergency, the lowest skill level would earn $29.80 per day, the CDCR said. Prisoners who work a 24-hour shift get a 24-hour rest period.
"Incarcerated firefighters are on the front lines saving lives," Bryan, a Democrat the bill's author, told Politico. "They are heroes just like everybody else on the front lines, and they deserve to be paid like it."
The CDCR said 1,116 incarcerated people have been tasked with helping to fight the wildfires.
Reality TV star Kim Kardashian has also been advocating for increased wages for firefighters, who have been paid the same rate for active emergencies since 1984.
"I am urging @cagovernor [Gavin Newsom] to do what no Governor has done in 4 decades and raise the incarcerated firefighter pay to a rate [that] honors a human being risking their life to save our lives and homes," she wrote on Instagram.
Incarcerated firefighters have historically made up as much as 30% of the California wildfire force, according to the Los Angeles Times. The jobs are considered highly coveted among prisoners as participants get to leave the traditional prison environment, get meaningful training, and get their sentences shortened, The Guardian reported.
California voters in November rejected Proposition 6, a ballot measure that would have banned involuntary servitude for people in prison.
The fire crew members receive two additional days off their sentence for every one day they serve on a fire crew.
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