UNION BATTLES INMATES WHO WANT TO WORK AS FIREFIGHTERS.

• Author: Boehm, Eric
• Position: POLICY - California Professional Firefighters Association

EACH SUMMER, WHEN wildfires sweep through parts of the state, thousands of inmates from the California Department of Corrections are deployed to work alongside the professional firefighters to battle the blazes. The professionals earn an average of $74,000 annually in the Golden State, while the inmates settle for $3 per day--and that's not even the worst inequality in the system. When they get out of prison, those same men and women are barred from pursuing careers as a fire-fighter or emergency medical technician, thanks to a California law that prohibits anyone with a criminal record from working in those professions.

It's an arrangement the professionals are pushing to maintain. After last year's devastating wildfires in many parts of the state, California lawmakers took a serious look at lifting the ban on letting formerly incarcerated individuals work as firefighters, but opposition from fire-fighters unions killed the effort.

"Good for them that they can work to repay their debt to society in this fashion, but that's not the same thing as a fire-fighter," Carroll Willis, communications director for the California Professional Firefighters Association, told a local TV station in Sacramento. "Firefighters are sworn officers. They take an oath and can and should be held to the highest possible standard."

That's as callous as it is misleading. In Willis' view, an inmate can be trusted to fight fires--but the same person, once released from prison, cannot?

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