Is the federal employees union discriminating against AD firefighters?

Wildfire Today has learned that the union that represents federal employees in the southeast geographic area is using their power and influence to make it very difficult for AD (Administratively Determined) firefighters, who are not full-time government employees, to be selected for incident management teams.

We are for unions, mostly because over the last 100 years they did a lot to improve the working conditions and pay for workers. But there have been times when the power went to their heads and it was not always used for the overall good. Examples would be the impacts on the railroad and automotive industries in the middle of the last century.

In this case the union is again going too far, and taking advantage of the fact that AD employees have no union or anyone to represent their interests. The U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and other federal agencies in the Southeast are is cutting back on the number of AD employees on incident management teams in order to avoid the inevitable fights with the union. The Forest Service has an agreement with the union that says the Forest Service will minimize the number of ADs on teams and on other fire assignments.

Does the southeast geographic area have such a wealth of highly qualified fire personnel clamoring to get on the teams that they can ignore AD employees?

Is this happening in other geographic areas as well?