Photo Credit:Instagram/Kim kardashian
Reality TV star and entrepreneur, Kim Kardashian shared a lengthy post on Instagram advocating for incarcerated firefighters to receive higher pay. In California, hundreds of incarcerated people help fight wildfires year-round, earning a maximum of $10.24 per day plus an additional $1 per hour during emergencies.
“I have spent the last week watching my city burning. And have seen and spoken to many firefighters who are up all night long using every ounce of their strength to save our community,” Kardashian wrote. She also thanked the LA County Fire and Los Angeles City Fire for saving lives, homes and property.
She wrote, “On all 5 fires in Los Angeles, there are hundreds of incarcerated firefighters, risking their lives to save us. They are Palisades fire and Eaton fire in Pasadena working 24 hour shifts. They get paid almost nothing, risk their lives, some have died, to prove to the community they have now changed and are now fast responders, I see them as heroes.”
Kardashian went ahead to claim that the incarcerated firefighters have been paid $1/hour to risk their lives and the pay has been the same since 1984. She wrote that the pay has neither been raised with inflation or raised when the fires got worse and many died. She claims this year, there was an agreement to raise the incarcerated firefighter pay to $5/hour but it got shot down last minute.
“I am urging @cagovernor to do what no governor has done in 4 years and raise the incarcerated firefighter pay to a rate that honors a human being risking their life to save our lives and homes,” she continued. She also thanked all the firefighters at Calfire Ventura Training Center for saving the community when it started burning.
Kardashian concluded, “These are all FORMERLY incarcerated firefighters who have come home, and want to continue serving our community as firefighters. Due to bills passed by @antirecidivismcoalition, these guys can now get their sentences reduced, expunging the felonies from their records for the fire service. And when they come home can get six figure jobs working for the fire department.”
