DoD: We’re Cutting our Civilian Workforce Too
DoD has announced their intent to cut a substantial number of civilian jobs over the next 5 years – between 40,000 and 50,000. The planned cuts will amount to between 5 and 6 percent of the DoD civilian workforce. Approximately 12,000 are planned for next fiscal year alone.
(For those interested, DoD currently has around 1.4 million personnel in uniform full-time. DoD civilian employment at the end of September is projected to be roughly 777,000 – or just over 1/3 of DoD’s total full-time direct employees. For comparison, an equivalent cut in uniformed strength over 5 years would be between roughly 70,000 and 84,000.)
Many of the cuts are supposedly tied to a proposed future Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) action. However, the actual closing of bases won’t begin until 2016 in order to “allow the economy more time to recover”.
Funny – I seem to remember the POTUS telling us for a couple of years now that the economy was “improving”, but maybe my memory is wrong. And I seem to recall that something else that will happen in 2016, too.
In any case: further consolidation of military health care facilities was identified as a way to reduce civilian employment. The end of the war in Afghanistan was also identified as a potential source of civilian employment reductions.
I have to say I’m a bit skeptical on the feasibility of that “health care facility consolidation” claim. IMO, that might work in some locales where multiple major military installations currently and such consolidation hasn’t already happened. But in many places, military healthcare downsizing/consolidation has already happened. Many Army installations I’ve been to during the past few years no longer have a full Army hospital; instead they have “Army Health Clinics” or “Army Health Centers”. That’s true today at some good-sized installations like Fort Rucker, Redstone Arsenal, Fort Meade, or Fort Huachuca. So I’m kinda wondering about the mechanics and feasibility of that part of DoD’s plan.
DoD has indicated that they hope to achieve this reduction through “attrition”. They’re considering offering early retirement incentives and hiring freezes to try to cut end strength without having to let people go involuntarily.
Something tells me that might just not work as well as expected. Unlike uniformed military, DoD civilian employees haven’t gotten a yearly pay raise since January 2010. Their pension (such as it is under the current system – it ain’t particularly generous any more) is based on their salary during their highest 36 continuous months of employment. This usually ends up being the last 3 years of civilian service – and sequestration furloughs later this year will screw with that average. I’m guessing quite a number of folks who are retirement eligible will hold out to see if they (1) start getting pay raises again as the economy improves as well as (2) letting their “high 3 average” recover from sequestration before they start punching out. Many will also want (or need) to work post-retirement, so a poor economy will also be a disincentive to retire immediately.
Bottom line: it ain’t just the uniformed side of the house that’s feeling the downsizing pinch in DoD. And for those of you in uniform who were planning to retire or separate and move to a civilian job with DoD, it looks like the potential for hiring freezes just raised the bar for getting hired as a government civillian substantially, too.
Category: Military issues
“I seem to remember the POTUS telling us for a couple of years now that the economy was “improving”. Wasn’t the “Summer of Recovery” back in 2010? Much more of this “Recovery” and nobody will be working.
Post military career, I’ve worked as both contractor support, and now as a DON civilian. The money and bennies were better on the contract side, but job security was a major draw to go govvie.
Now, not so much. Not whining, times are hard for a lot of folks and I’m thankful to be employed and able to provide. But this sh!t is getting pretty old pretty quickly.
I think what he meant was the economy is improving for all the freeloaders, i.e.: people who don’t and/or refuse to work.
Just glad I’m retired and can choose to find my own way now.
Well, at least some flowers and grass are being taken care of: “Around the same time the State Department was warning the public about the painful pinch from sequester cuts, it was also signing off on a $700,000 gardening contract at the home of a U.S. ambassador in Belgium, federal documents show.” Fox
Agreed, AirCav, even if it’s Belgian gardeners who get employed.
Living large is great for those who still get to do it, especially when it is on the backs of others. Are there any morals left among our elite?
Aww, boo hoo, the sell outs who got out and turned their military experience into a more lucrative and lazier fucking job than any soldier could ever dream of are finally realizing just what a bad economy means. I’m so sad for all those retired 1SG’s who jumped ship in the middle of two wars and got contracts–I mean jobs as DA civilians making triple my pay for less than a third of the work. Cry me a fucking river. Go fuck yourselves. No, really. I scorn the day your fathers somehow managed to drunkenly dribble sperm into your mother’s snatch.
OWB: Put succinctly, NO.
Hmmm wonder if they are cutting Army technician and USAF ART jobs too then
What I wonder is which jobs they’ll cut? There are a lot of jobs out there that former E-9s and O-6 and aboves managed to make a civilian slot for themselves before they retired that probably comprise a big number of these civilian jobs… think those will be many of the ones that get cut? More likely it’ll be the ones that were meant to provide continuity for the lower tiers of AD members. That’s just my opinion/worry.
Bummer. I thought the whole fiscal policy vs monetary policy bit meant the lefties were for direct employment. Guess that doesn’t apply to DoD. From last I heard at work, I’m still working though the process for a civilian job. Better than staying a year-to-year contractor (I don’t like vomiting every morning wondering if I’ll have a job tomorrow). Heck, I’m still doing the job they wouldn’t let me have while I was in because I wasn’t a civilian/contractor.
I reckon those civilian employees ought to stay away from the office for a few days, just for their own safety.
I don’t understand it.
Why would the civilian employees just meekly stand there and allow DoD, or ANYBODY, to cut them?
Isn’t it a felony to cut people?
Will DoD be using knives, razors, bayonets, swords, or axes to cut these folks?
If DoD is going around bragging about cutting people, then the cops need to bust ’em and run ’em in before they actually do it.
I sure hope there’s ambulances and paramedics standing by, and the emergency rooms are well supplied with blood donations.
Ow!
That hurts!
(That was a cutting remark, just a cut above the rest.)
The Obama budget announcement had all sorts of bad news wrapped up in it, involving the DoD. Last Thursday, we were notified that if this budget goes through as requested, all 76 locations of our 5th-grade oriented STEM (science, technology, engineering & math) academic program, funded as a line item but administered through the DoD, will shut down as of 1 OCT, along with 120 other federally funded STEM education programs. Our program has been around for about twenty years, has hosted over 800,000 students, and has been lauded as principal in keeping more of our target groups (mostly urban Title I qualifying students) in school and doing better in STEM related academics. Unusual for any such federally funded program, we ere explicitly directed to reach out to and service not only Title I public schools, but private schools and even home-schoolers.
The rational given? “To consolidate multiple programs into four national programs, and to free up funds to hire 100,000 new STEM public school teachers.” IOW, to go further down the Soviet-style path of centralized control, and to pour yet more money into the grossly swollen public school coffers.