Pentagon bomb techs in debt
Dan Lamothe at the Washington Post tells the story of how the bomb techs at the Pentagon were overpaid, despite what they were told when they were hired, and were tossed in tens of thousands of dollars in debt;
In January 2015, members of the Pentagon’s bomb squad got some financially devastating news: They had been overpaid for years, the Defense Department informed them, and the government wanted the money back — all of it.
For some bomb technicians, that meant they had suddenly accrued debts of up to $173,000. And going forward, defense officials also told them, their annual pay would be cut by 25 percent.
All because of what the government described as a clerical error that the Pentagon bureaucracy itself — not the bomb squad members — had made.
The bomb techs thought they were getting hazardous duty pay. Some moved to DC to work the job for what they thought were higher wages – some are saying that they wouldn’t have taken the job if they’d known that remuneration was substantially less than what they had signed on for. But, the Feds work under different rules than those they force on the private sector.
The case has little comparison in the private sector, said Catherine Fisk, an employment-law professor at the University of California at Irvine. While most employees working on an “at-will” basis can be fired or have their pay cut with little notice, there isn’t a legal basis under which a company could recoup money it had promised to pay unless the employees did something clearly improper or illegal such as filing false expense reports, she said.
Lamothe reports that teammates claim that one tech, Axel Fernandez, one of the first hired to the unit, committed suicide because of the $136,000 debt;
Fernandez’s job offer letter, dated September 2008, said his base pay was $69,081, with a Washington-area cost-of-living supplement of $14,431, bringing the total to $83,512. With an additional 25 percent in hazardous-duty pay, the letter said, he would receive $104,390 annually.
Yeah, when I enlisted in the Army, I initially enlisted for three years. In those heady days following AIT, the drill sergeants offered us a chance to extend enlistments for a year for $2500 ($11,400 in 2016 dollars), so, you know, I figured what the hey. Well, four years later, after I’d done the year, some civilian figured that the bonus was paid in error. He couldn’t find the DA message that authorized the payment, and the Army decided that they wanted their money back, you know, even though I’d fulfilled my part of the bargain.
Working for the Feds has it’s pit falls.
Thanks to David for the link.
Category: Big Pentagon
It’s not like they couldn’t have just written it off because they’re broke.
??
The other thing that I read about this that wasn’t covered in the Post article, was that Axel Fernandez was distraught about the fact that he brought friends and other EOD teammates to this job and felt guilty about that as well.
Damn shame the guy killed himself.
Too bad the bureaucrats that caused this didn’t feel guilty enough to kill THEMSELVES.
Fuckers probably got a bonus.
Wow.
That sucks.
One of the reasons I will no longer work for the man.
Yeah, there’s little comparison to the civilian world, except for the part about the gubmint being willing to lie to either private sector or public employees, especially the military.
Here’s an idea: Contracts should be honored.
The government always honors its contracts. Until it doesn’t want to anymore.
*raspy breathing through a respirator*
“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.” – S1
In all rights, the pay should come out of the supervisor of the clerks who made the error.
But it won’t.
So the gubmint not only lies, it also rips people off. No surprise there.
If it sounds too good to be true, it is, even if it was put into writing.
This sucks.
Well, this sucks. The brain trust should provide for the hazardous duty pay and make it retroactive to cover the excess compensation. It can have a specific condition date (the hire date of each affected debtor) and end date (the notice date of the over payment.) How tough would this be to do? I don’t know but it seems a reasonable option.
Actually, 2/17, the WaPo article indicates that everyone who’s been through adjudication so far has ended up keeping all hazardous duty pay received prior to being notified that it was authorized in error and was being stopped. The only pay anyone has had to return is pay they received after being notified that it was being stopped. (Like private industry, sometimes Federal civilian payroll and personnel actions aren’t always 100% “in synch”.)
I tend to agree that these positions probably should be considered “hazardous duty” and authorized hazardous duty pay. But that’s not my call, and hazardous duty pay is not a permanent entitlement; it is dependent on circumstances and must be formally authorized. If the situation changes and authority terminates, it ends.
And if the positions have been determined by appropriate authority not to rate hazardous duty pay, the hazardous duty pay has to stop. Something to do with violating Federal appropriations laws, I think.
I’d be interested in knowing how ATF or other Federal Police Agencies (like the Capitol Police) pays the hazard differential for EOD duty?
My limited understanding is that the differential is only paid for the pay period when one is actually working with (or is reasonably believed to be working with) explosives, not every pay period that one is on duty patrolling inside the Pentagon.
My speculation here – and it is speculation, I have no personal knowledge – is that the 25% HDP was paid continuously from date of hire. I believe you are correct in stating that it’s not supposed to be done that way. But the figure of “up to $175k” works out to 7 or 8 years at an average of $20-25k a year – and I think the article gave around $100k annually as an example of one of those individual’s total annual pay.
If that’s the case, I can see why someone would complain. Seeing someone working next to them in the same place with the same grade and seniority but getting 25% more pay full-time might tend to make people jealous. That jealousy might well lead to someone “pulling the thread” and discovering the error, then filing a complaint.
Again: I don’t know if that’s what happened, but it certainly would fit.
Have no idea how other Federal LE agencies handle hazardous duty pay for their bomb squad personnel, or if they have a different agency-approved special pay for that.
Several times over the last few years, DOD has used slightly differing interpretations of law when it comes to authorizing pay. The issue with the overseas housing allowance being the most well reported.
I could see this falling into the same type of trap.
Your tax dollars at work. They won’t hesitate to spend millions or billions on ridiculous boondoggles, but take care of their employees? Pffft…..
So let me get this straight…you’re saying the Feds promised these guys a bunch of stuff and then realized they (the Feds) fucked up and now they want a lot that stuff back?
No offense to any of our temporary guest workers here illegally, but I’d rather see these guys keep the money and fuck paying health care, food stamps, and in-state tuition for FUCKING ILLEGAL ALIENS who are committing a CRIME just by being here….
What in the shit is going on in the government these days? No fucking way I’m telling anyone their Uncle Sam is an honorable employer…fucking shitbag from what I’m seeing…next thing you know they’ll start charging military retirees more for health care and shit…oh wait…
See my comments above. To date, it seems that everyone who’s been adjudicated has kept all pay received prior to notification that it was erroneous and was being stopped. Some are still pending decision, but I’d guess they’ll all be allowed to keep all hazardous duty pay received prior to date of notification.
I saw that post facto, that was at least a bit reassuring that these poor bastards won’t get screwed…that’s got be a very unsettling letter to receive. Owing the government anything is never good for one’s income retention.
It would be great if the Federal Government could show this much interest in recouping the money that the Obama administration funneled to Solyndra. But that was only $600,000,000, not as if it would make difference to the National Debt.
WORD
“Most members are still waiting for determinations on how much money they owe. The Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals, which weighs in on a variety of personnel decisions, has determined so far that two employees can keep all but a few hundred dollars in past hazardous-duty pay, but they still owe money from one paycheck issued after they were notified, defense officials said. Others, including the Fernandez family, are awaiting a decision — and the 25 percent pay cut still stands for all members.”
Of course, with the unit in a mess, the appeals ongoing, and various offices chiming in on different aspects of this thing, the cost to taxpayers will probably exceed the amount they were ‘over paid.’ And it most certainly will if the remaining cases turn out like the two that have all ready been decided.
You’re probably right. The wheels of Bureaucracy, like Justice, often turn exceedingly slow.
Nah, those wheels turn slow when they’d have to do more work than they “want” to do.
Same as DFAS, when you owe money, they take it out before you even realize it and so quickly your head spins. When they owe you money, “Well, it looks like we won’t be able to get that done this pay period. Soooooo, maybe next month. If you don’t get it next month, then for sure the month after that. If you don’t get it in 2 months, do a pay inquiry and we’ll try to figure out why you didn’t get paid which could take a couple weeks, or so….”
Not that I’ve ever been through that exact situation before or anything.
Best comment I saw in the original article said that the squad members should just quit gracefully after returning any and all bombs to their original placements.
Me, I understand that if the duty is no longer considered hazardous that the hazard pay could be withdrawn. I think I would have REAL heartache if I had a hiring letter that said “you will be paid $XXX” and then a few years later get told “well, actually we are cutting that by 20%”. Maybe it’s just me, but I think I would want the guy disabling the bomb in my office to be very happy and anxious to try and continue a long and rewarding life.
…Why is the Pentagon serviced by a special DoD agency, when everybody else in the District comes under AD or Guard/Reserve troops?:
“…Military explosive ordnance disposal units from nearby bases, including Fort McNair in Washington and Fort Belvoir in Virginia, had handled the mission in the past but had to contend with traffic and other delays.”
Then you put together a joint unit stationed AT THE F@KING PENTAGON. EOD units don’t take up a lot of space, and maybe if they weren’t so busy setting up diversity offices they could find enough square footage.
This whole thing sounds like somebody’s attempt to build a little empire for themselves without having to deal with those icky Real Military guys, and the bomb techs got caught in the collateral damage. (IMHO, YMMV)
Mike
Is it really a good idea to piss off a bunch of EOD guys?
Honestly- You can’t keep the EOD guys at Belvoir, the Navy Yard, Andrews, Bolling, or even Aberdeen/Edgewood, or the Naval Academy (or the Dahlgren/Annapolis Naval Station) or even Dahlgren because of Traffic is a crock.
Send a helicopter to get the guys.
Someone set up a private boondoggle, and it looks like the pay recoupment is part of that realization of boondoggle-ness. I see how some folks have an issues about why you pay a bomb tech hazard pay for days when you don’t have to deal w a bomb…On the other hand, we pay jump pay to Airborne units, even if they only jump 1x a month.
At the end of the day, it’s EOD and I wouldn’t want that job- ever. So pay them and let them keep the pay. As others have said- it’s not worth pissing off the EOD tech.
Not sure of your exact intent, but the Army did have an EOD company on Fort McNair through 2007 or so. They moved to Belvoir or somewhere, though. After they left, only A/1-3 was left to represent an operational Army unit. Animal Guard got moved to Myer after I left, leaving CMH, MDW, the NDU, and the Inter-American Defense University on McNair.
EOD; You Don’t Need Them, Until You Need Them.
Sounds like they were guilty of “stolen clerical error”.
This is bullshit. If it were me, I’d contact a lawyer, then my Senators.
Just another reason why I keep every scrap of paper related to my employment, no matter what it is.
I hope this story gets enough traction so that whoever made this genius move to extort the EOD guys is idiot-shamed into leaving Federal employment forever.
There aren’t AD military, right? I should think they’d find equally good work at civilian companies that have no government connection, such as mining, construction aggregates (gravel to you) – stuff like that.
And for the inside the beltway leadership win of the year:
“The decision to rescind the hazard-duty pay was made by Susan A. Yarwood, then the director of WHS human resources. In an April 2015 letter, she apologized to the bomb-squad members affected but said the WHS had requested an audit to determine their “overpayment amounts.”
Yarwood, since promoted to deputy director at the WHS, said in a statement that she met with bomb-squad members and promised to make sure that WHS would recommend that the people affected not have to repay the Pentagon.
“I assured them the information provided by WHS about the overpayments would include clear support for waiving the debt,” Yarwood said.
But she referred the cases to collection by the Pentagon’s Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS) agency anyway, citing Pentagon policy. And there were no guarantees that an appeals process would find in favor of the unit.”
Let me take a leap here and show my ‘R’ (Realist) nature: Would those in DC smart enough to screw these men & women be so quick to demand repayment if welfare recipients had been overpaid? Yeah, me either. But, hey, it’s only my ‘R’ nature asking that question. That’s the government, “Penny wise and pound foolish”. Tools screw the ones less likely to vote for the liberals.
IMHO….being a member of a bomb squad tech organization takes a LOT of balls. But to ask for part of the money they had been promised and paid be returned, now THAT takes SOLID BRASS BALLS!!!!!!!!
Anyone want to guess how the widow or survivors of the individual who committed suicide were sucked blood dry when they could no longer get it from the deceased?