How would you feel if everyday you showed up for work knowing there is a possibility that due to the inherent risks of your job, you could die on the job. You leave your family very day before your shift and just pray you return home safely. You do this for 10 or 20 or 30 years trusting the system that for your years of dedication, you are protected.
As a nation protected by our 1st responders and firefighters after 9-11, for years firefighters have been afflicted with numerous cancers or injuries and come to find out their pensions will not cover them. UNFORGIVEABLE!
American Firefighter Support is committed to endorsing federal candidates that support the Federal Firefighters Fairness Act of 2021. This bill provides federal workers’ compensation to firefighters who contract certain illnesses as a result of their service.
Specifically, the bill provides that heart disease, lung disease, and specified cancers of federal employees employed in fire protection activities for at least 5 years are presumed to be proximately caused by such employment if the employee is diagnosed with the disease within 10 years of employment; and the disability or death of the employee due to such disease is presumed to result from personal injury sustained in the performance of duty.
These presumptions also apply to fire protection employees (regardless of the length of employment) who contract any communicable disease at the center of a designated pandemic or any chronic infectious disease that the Department of Labor determines is related to job-related hazards.
In addition, regardless of the length of time an employee in fire protection activities has been employed, any communicable disease that has been determined to be a pandemic by the World Health Organization or the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or any chronic infectious disease, the contraction of which the Secretary of Labor through regulations determines to be related to the hazards to which an employee in fire protection activities may be subject.”