Back to the Future?
The Army Times is reporting that the Army may temporarily assign a rather large number of soldiers to “installation support” duties, in some (I’d guess most) cases outside their normal MOS. These functions are currently being performed for the most part by contractor support personnel.
Specific roles planned for this temporary detail of soldiers are dining facility operations and security guard functions. The period would be for up to 18 months; around 6,000 positions are being considered for such temporary augmentation.
The rationale, as you might have guessed, is financial. Sequestration has cut budgets, and has reduced dollars available for both training and contractor support. So the Army has to do something make available dollars cover the essentials. This at least avoids reducing the number of folks in uniform.
In many ways this seems little more than a return to the way the Army did business prior to the Reagan-era push for “contracting out”. Prior to that, much if not most installation support was performed by personnel in uniform. That’s not generally the case today.
I have to admit I’m of two minds here. I’m not a huge fan of contracting out mission-essential functions – and many installation support functions are indeed mission essential. (You don’t eat or guard the place, you don’t operate or fight for long.) I’ve long thought DoD went much too far down the “contract it out” primrose path. That works OK as long as you have the money to contract things out and/or are in a safe area. But when funds get tight or you’re in a combat zone, there are some serious problems inherent in depending heavily on non-uniformed contractors for mission essential tasks. Plus, it also obscures the number of people it really takes to defend the nation.
On the other hand – doing this will take a rather large number of troops away from their units, particularly if the augmentation ends up being short-term (3 or 6 months) rotations. And it does make keeping those troops detailed to work outside their assigned units and MOS trained on their primary MOS damned difficult. That may not be an issue in the short term – if there’s no money to train, it’s damned hard to keep soldiers well-trained anyway. But eventually it certainly could be an issue, for both the service and the individuals. (However, please spare me the bogus “That’s work is demeaning!” argument. There’s nothing inherently demeaning about cooking, washing dishes, or pulling guard duty. They may not be glamorous or exciting jobs, but they’re essential. And soldiers have been doing them for centuries.)
Comments?
Category: Big Army, Military issues
I see a way for a lot of First Sergeants to get rid of their shitbags.
It’s Ok, as long as the wealth is shared among ALL soldiers at the installation, not just a select few. Everyone gets to do scut work, and not spend too much time away from their MOS duties and training. Or at least it’s perceived as being shared equally amongst all.
Well, back in the Dark Ages when NHSparky, I and others here were in the Navy, we RARELY saw a civilian doing anything other than some base clerical position.
For example, in order to make our squadrons more mobile, we had folks assigned capable of every job needed. We had our own (small, but efficient) admin department, 5-6 Mess Cooks, a Flight Surgeon and 2 Hospital Corpsman, our own Maintenance/Ordnance/Avionics, etc details, complete with tools, a Tactical Library & intel department, etc.
Basically, with a VERY short notice, we could have a fully-functioning squadron deployed anywhere in the world and ready to begin ops within hours of arrival.
Ships, of course, MUST have all of these aboard, but I used the Squadron experience as an example of, like you say, Jonn, how it used to be.
I, for one, am completely in favour of eliminating 95% of all civilian contractors within the military. We SHOULD be self-sufficient in all parts of the mission assignment, and able to hit the ground and be active within hours of deployment.
@1–I also see a lot of shitbag First Sergeants pulling for this instead of deploying.
I’m all in favor of this. Contracting is great when you need extra help, but the Army still needs soldiers who do menial jobs, sad to say.
I remember when I was stationed at Schofield Barracks in the 90’s we used to do something like this. Each unit would go in cycles. The cycles were Red, Gold, and Black. One was training, one was DRF, and one was duty. On the duty cycle we would do things like work at the gym, help at CIF, funeral detail, gate guard, etc. We did the same thing when I was stationed at Ft. Campbell. That didn’t change until we started doing back to back deployments. Granted back then the MFO mission still rotated between the 25th, 101st, 82nd, and 10th Mountain.
When I first enlisted in 1991, we did KP, we did guard duty, we did the whole host and gamut of unpleasant and demeaning tasks that have since been contracted out. And I have no problem returning to that model. The issue I have is that it sounds like the plan is for this to be extended TDY where you are doing yardwork with a pair of scissors for six to 18 months, rather than doing it for the week or so that it was your turn.
And Tim is correct. The only time I ever saw a significant presence at PSD (Personnel Support Detachment) or galley, etc., was when I was at boot or a training command. Get out to the fleet, and it’s almost all military running the shops, even on shore. About the only exception to that rule might be a few civilians working as dishwashers, etc., at the galley, or the guys running the PWC (Public Works Center.)
So Beetle Bailey has to go back to scrubbing trash cans and peeling potatoes?
Well, personally, I’ve never understood why the DoD thought it was a good idea to turn basic needs over to contractors. I expected my tax money to be spent on food, medicine and maintenance, not on hiring civilians to do those jobs.
I’m only going to say that if taking care of itself was good enough for the Roman Army, and that includes building and maintaining its own facilities, then that practice should have been followed, not dumped. Hiring civilian contractors is not cost-effective.
My, how things change….during my time we never saw civilians doing this kind of thing. I think the only civilians I saw working were a few in the maintenance bay we had our tanks painted sand and a couple where we drew TA50. I was on SD for 3 months myself taking care of the softball diamonds on post and opening Hood Stadium every morning for PT. I got to work security for a Fabulous Thunderbirds concert during that stint!
Ex-PH2: the argument was that hiring contractors to do certain support jobs was that it would reduce long-term costs through lowering the size of active-duty force. This would in turn reduce the size of the required training/logistical/support base specifically associated with active-duty personnel, and would also reduce long-term retirement costs. It also improves the “tooth to tail” ratio (combat troops to support troops) – in my view, artificially, but it improves it on paper nonetheless.
The problem with this argument is threefold. First, it only really IMO works for safe locations like CONUS. In dangerous areas, you pay out the wazoo or hire local contractors (and maybe pay out the wazoo there, too, plus buy a bunch of potential security issues. Second, the contractors may well cost more up-front (although for many jobs, that’s not the case after military bennies like medical care, housing, utilities, MWR, retirement, etc . . . , are considered). Overseas, it’s damned problematic in high-cost areas like Euripe or Japan. And third, it removes an asset that can be used to support deployments. Soldiers working base support can be levied to deploy and work infrastructure worldwide as required. That’s harder to do (but possible) with civilian employees and support contractors.
There’s also the issue of understating the actual number of persons required to do the job. Contractor personnel often get “forgotten” when strength totals are reported or publicized. Much harder to do that regarding the military and civilian personnel working for DoD.
Bottom line: for some functions, contracting out is a good solution. But IMO we’ve done way too much of that in the last 20 years or so – and it’s coming back to bite us now.
Considering that civilian wages are higher than military pay, I’ve never thought it was cost effective.
And my experience with sand crabs at Great Lakes was that they wanted the military out of their way and viewed those of us working in our rates as taking jobs away from them. I got a LOT of that kind of comment from them, and that was in 1972, before the Reagan era.
I don’t have a problem with it, as long as it’s administered fairly. As a young Airman, I pulled my share of menial tasks. But, normally only in our own facilities. Emptying the trash daily, latrine queen twice a week and “weeds and seeds” as required. There was nothing demeaning about it. Well, the metal feet protectors for cutting grass were pretty stupid.
Troops doing base and support jobs?
From cutting the grass to printing ID’s and filing paperwork, it is overall a good idea, with a caveat: It means that we need to put more Troops in boots, and get rid of a LOT of civilians, DoD and contractors.
In my day, cutting the grass in the Company/Battalion area was an additional duty performed on an as needed basis. If you have someone on extra duty, they’re a good choice. If you don’t, you pull out the DA6 to find out who gives up a few hours of their “off duty time.” Or, you put it in the CQ SOP duties for a weekend.
Cooks were Privates through Sergeants First Class. The Battalion CSM or Brigade CSM knew exactly how to get the quality of meal improved, or the forks cleaner. Of course, in those days, LEADERS ate in the mess hall, on a regular basis, at the end of the line. They didn’t feel themselves too important to wait for the Troops to eat. If there was slop, if it was cold, or if it was all gone, the Leaders knew because they were the last to get any.
And when Desert Shield/Storm kicked off, it was Army cooks that went to feed their Bns, not KBR.
When you went to the ID card office, it was an E4 or an E5 that took your picture and laminated your new card.
It was MP’s, not civilians that guarded the gates, and it was NCO’s not civilians that trained the Troops.
Yes, it is a good idea to return these cost savings measures to the military. But ONLY if we add the number of Troops required to do so, AND get rid of the civilians that are sucking the budget dry. And NO, Troops should not be assigned KP or lawn mower duty for 3-18 months, or even weeks. It’s a day duty.
There are all sorts of ways that this can be implemented badly, of course. Doesn’t change the fact that depending upon civilian support can have negative results.
BTDT. Following 9-11, we functioned on a base closed to everyone except essential military personnel. No food coming in (civilian grocery suppliers), no laundry (civilian contractor), no restaurants, no new medicine or anything else coming in. I was lucky in that I was housed off-base in a hotel with a great restaurant serving a terrific breakfast, which I ate every day. During the day, we nibbled on whatever snacks we brought with us from the local convenience store (until they ran out). When I left base at midnight or whenever, would stop somewhere for a quick bite, then to bed and repeat the process. Sure, doable for a while, but not very healthy in the long term.
Not really whining here. We managed, of course. The point is that it showed us that sustainability without the civilian support personnel would eventually cause serious adverse effects upon mission effectiveness.
@14 TN has the key – we need more goddamn soldiers if we want to add to the duty list. Either that or accept another cut of X% in the number of troops trained and ready to deploy. We had 2MM active duty SMs in 1990 – today we’re under 1.5MM and dropping.
I don’t think anyone would argue the work is degrading – I love the idea of having basic support functions in house where you can order someone to do them, and make ’em do it overseas or under fire. And we’re much better off if the whole military is trained to support itself in peacetime CONUS, rather than figuring it out in some desert hell hole. But we’re already stretched thin between training for war and fighting that war – add basic life support tasks in, and everyone knows the training is what will suffer…
Actually, Ex-PH2 – you might be surprised. Military labor really isn’t all that cheap any more, especially when compared against low-end part time work.
An E2 makes roughly $1700/mo; an E4, $2300/mo. That works out to $20,400 and $27,600, respectively. That’s well above the full-time minimum wage level. And that’s base pay – no allowances included.
Military benefits are also expensive – housing, medical, meals, retirement, employer share of FICA taxes, etc . . . . Rough rule of thumb there for mil labor is to double labor costs.
For low end work (cook, dishwasher, janitorial), an employer often will also hire part-time workers in preference to full-time workers, and will only employ key persons full-time. That way, all they’ll be paying for in the way of bennies to most of their workforce is FICA and Unemployment taxes – which together only add a few percent. Let’s say 15% for argument.
Bottom line: if a contractor charges the govt $20/hr for services on a janitorial or DFAC contract, that’s probably cheaper than the total cost of doing the same job with military labor. The contractor could pay his part-time employees (most of whom would be part-time) $12.50 an hour (full cost of about $14.40) and still make a good chunk of change.
The problem is that if you can’t fund the contract, you have to “hey you” grab folks and train them to do the job, taking them away from other duties in the process. That’s do-able in an emergency. But you can’t do that long term.
We made a choice years ago to “save” a few $$$ by taking troops out of these kinds of jobs to (1) create a “leaner, meaner” military and (2) improve training efficiency. Unfortunately, the hidden issues weren’t explored. They’re biting us in the hindquarters now.
That said: I’m not sure I buy the cost savings, either – but not because military labor is that cheap. Many times I simply don’t think DoD negotiates a particularly good contract for services to be performed by relatively unskilled labor, and overpays.
SGT E: agreed. But getting more troops is going to be a damn hard sell politically.
I ran the potato peeler many times while on KP. We never had KP for weeks on end as TN states it was a day duty and came up in regular rotation. It was your turn you just went and did it. If you did a good a job the cooks remembered you and took care of you when they saw you in line for chow or out in the field. Our guys were also assigned guard duty on a rotating basis.
I mowed lawns, painted parking lots. During my time doing some of that I got to play sports (soccer and basketball), that was a lot of fun and made for some great memories. It wasn’t anything to do with my MOS but I met a ton of guys from different backgrounds and had a great experience.
Doing this work also makes you appreciate the effort that others have put in to make sure your chow is hot and edible, or the countless other small things that make life in the military easier or miserable depending on the quality of the small stuff.
I did not realize that all of this was done by civilians these days.
Im all for it, I have never understood why we went away from having MP’s on the gates at all installations, cooks being cooks in our DFACs, admin pogs doing admin pog work and junior enlisted doing area beautification. Sure it sucks, but that is the job you enlist into and it is a much better use of the Army’s and the soldiers time being productive and not playing video games in the barracks….I foresee a lot of SGM and 1SG details being handed out to sub-standard soldiers. This isnt going to be popular but I have heard this is what a garrison Army looks like.
One thing I would like to add, I believe its more efficient to have the soldiers running these duties, have you ever tried to get a DoD civilian or contractor to do something? They typically tell you they dont know, or that isnt their job. No PV2 is going to tell that to an NCO.
Well, of course guard duty and KP are military traditions. However, it’s worth exploring just why those things are traditions: Think about the post-WWII peacetime draft (yes, I know the Korean War and the Vietnam War occurred during this time period, but most of the draft years were “peaceful” for most troops.) During that time you had a lot of soldiers/sailors/airmen/marines that you had to keep occupied or they would get into trouble so putting then on KP or having them guard the ASP with baseball bats (becaus you can’t trust those draftees with live ammo, after all) or picking up litter alongside the road made sense. And being draftees, they were by definition non-career soldiers, so who cared if they were working in their MOS of radio operator or infantryman? They were going to do their two years and then go back to the civilian world anyway. Also there’s the equipment they had to be proficient with: The most highly technical piece of equipment a 1965-era Infantryman operated was an M-16, a deuce-and-a-half, or a PRC-25. Fast forward to the all-volunteer military: Nowadays we have all sorts of high tech equipment (GPS, GLDs, frequency-hopping radios, etc) that require constant training in order to keep up proficiency. Not only that, for recruiting and retention you have to entice soldiers to join up and to re-up if you want to keep your numbers high – that’s a little hard to do if they are spending a lot of time picking up cigarette butts on the side of the road or scrubbing trash cans beside the mess hall. And finally, lets not forget the inequitable nature of that glorious designation of “ED” (Exempt from Duty.) Being the Sergeant Major’s driver, or the message clerk, or just the personal favorite of some high ranking officer is often enough to get a young troop ED’d, which of course means that the burden of duty falls that much harder on those who remain on the DA-6 (<—duty roster for the non-Army types out there. 😉 ) Not only that, but whole units can be "ED'd"… Read more »
War story time: Back in the day at RAF Schulthorpe we caught KP for a week at a time every six months or maybe it was annually. It was rotated among squadrons and every one got their turn. I think it was limited to below E-4. The cooks were military. While not the greatest thing to do, it beat “humping the ramp” in the winter; and I learned some good stuff that served me later in my two careers (military and high paid Army civilian).
All of this coupled with the cut backs reminds me of the post Desert Storm/Cold War time around 91/92 when we were all subjected to the briefings/videos with the whole no more Task Force Smiths crap and promises of no hollow force. That of course was followed by being farmed out to work out of the MOS, less training time, and people facing the separation boards and points going through the rough in many MOS’s thus freezing promotions. It was not a fun time to be in the Army. We seem to be headed down that road again, but hey as long as that piece of junk F-35 is still in the budget and the LCS who needs to take care of the troops. There are some tough times coming rapidly and we are in for a rough ride and we are all ready seeing it across the board and I have a feeling it will make the early 90’s round look like a pleasure cruise.
In 1966, I was a small farm boy, 17 years old when I joined the Army. I probably had every shit-detail known to man during my 3 years. The only exception was 1 year in the field in Vietnam. There it was guard duty every night but no KP. I look back on the experience in a very positive way, I guess I would call it building character. I don’t know if it is better now, I don’t pretend to be an expert. I suppose there are pros and cons for either. I spent 6 months in Germany before Vietnam. By volunteering for KP on Christmas Day I got a 3 day pass so it was good for me.
I don’t know what you people are bitching about.
I had to work out of my rate (PH) more than once, and I had a six section duty call – once every 6 days, I sat on the quarterdeck at work and was restricted to the base, and got to watch wharf rats drag their food supplies across the airfield. Until I made 3rd class (PH3), I made coffee even if I didn’t drink it, swept and swabbed and buffed floors, picked up after the senior POs who were slobs, did inventory on paper, film, batteries, cameras, lenses, and chemicals, answered phones, typed letters, ordered meals for people standing duty, filled out paperwork for people who couldn’t figure out how to do it, and ran errands.
The only thing I didn’t do was mow the lawn in the airfield. The CBs did that.
What the hell are you people bitching about?
I remember the “Pine Cone Rebellion” at Ft. Bragg. An SF Team Sergeant in Group refused to wear his beret while picking up pine cones (yes, a pine cone detail) on Normandy Dr. Some Division idiot hollered at him about his headgear and the rest of the team removed theirs. The shit hit the fan.
Demeaning for SF teams to pick up pine cones, cut grass and do post chores? There was NO Special Operations then… we were under 18th Airborne Corps and it was “our turn” for post details. The problem was that an SF Company had around 70 men per company (there were hardly ANY full teams) and they were treated and sent out to post work details like a company in Division (@120 men). I remember a LTC telling a flash-qualified soldier to wear civilian clothes when cutting the grass around the “Puzzle Palace.”
@25 Ex-PH2: who’s bitching? I’m just saying you can’t have Joes in two places at once. If they’re on details, they ain’t training, and if you want to put a guy downrange every other year, training is pretty damn important.
If your standard is to exceed the standards, then your standards are too low.
In the early 90’s my GI position was contracted out. The contractor was required to report the in-commission rate once a week according to the AFI. I had to spend 5 hours every day making the report twice because the Colonels might want to see it, and if they did; it better be fresh. 25 – 30 hours each week me; 2.5 – 3 hours for the contractor. It’s not hard to see how a contractor was cheaper in this case.
If the military wants to save money, it can start by reading its own requirements and holding people to them, just them, and no more. If the requirements really need to be increased then increase them, but get rid of the empire building chair-born commandos whose greatest skills are justifying their own jobs by making self-serving rules.
Oh, and by the way, why does a Colonel or a CMSgt need a driver?
I did my first hitch from 91 to 94, and I had my fair share of Mess Hall Server as well as Cycle Support, etc. At today’s deployment rate plus the equipment we use, there are a lot of “Perishable Skills” out there that have to be maintained via training. During my Active Duty time, though, Gyms and Libraries were a very convenient way for 1SG’s to get rid of slugs and shammers for months at a time!
It’s certainly a double edged sword. You can’t put more troops into base support ops without more troops on the roll. Otherwise, you remove troops from units who are already understaffed. The Navy has found this out with their deployments in support of IQ/AQ. When you start taking qualified/trained troops to augment other sources, you lose that capability in your own unit. On my last ship, we lost our ONLY intel specialist, who was great and made CPO just before he left on a one year deployment. So I had to have someone who did it as a secondary job move up to primary and then his primary job suffered, yada yada yada. Contracting is only supposed to be used for those functions that are not “inherently military in nature”. If it doesn’t put warheads on foreheads, it can be contracted.
However, more troops equal more money in the DOD budget we already are slashing. And yes, although military pay is sometimes lower than contractor pay, we don’t provide contractors with BAH, OHA, BAS, medical/dental benefits, commissary, blah blah blah which ratchet up the cost. It’s long been opined that the most expensive cost in any business is the people themselves. It’s no less true for the military.
It’s only truly effective when you can balance one with the other. However, knowing where that balance is difficult to establish and isn’t the same everywhere.
The COL and CSM need a driver because it isn’t safe to drive a vehicle without an aid driver. It is unsafe because no body inside the vehicle can see much of anything outside of it. That doesn’t mean that the driver has just that duty. It should be someone like the legal clerk (E4/5) that has duty in the TOC anyway, and the BC/CSM needs to be close anyway.
Extra duties are part of the job. When Joe has police call around the BN area as part of his regular duties, he is a lot less likely to throw trash on the ground.
Again, this works, ONLY if Troops are added and civilians cut. It does not work if Troop cuts continue and these duties become the average workday for Troops that are supposed to be on an FTX practicing counter-ambush and recon by fire. It does work if once a quarter Joe cuts the lawn, but not if 3 months a year he only cuts the grass on post.
It is not much different in the Navy. Everyone did 90 days in the kitchen, laundry, cleaned etc. Jobs that needed to be done and were done with the manpower on hand. There were jobs and extra duties in my 27 years (Army-Navy), that I thought sucked but did them. Yes, and bitc**d about it, but that was part of the fun. Misery loves company. You would figure that it would come as a welcomed break from the daily grind of training.
If 1SG’s have slugs that are constantly being assigned to details outside their primary or secondary AFSC’s, MOS’s, etc, then it might be time for the “Maybe you can come back and visit us” speech. I feel it’s better to have holes in the staffing report than have slugs whose sole contribution to society is to take up space.
I did that back in 2002 on lejeune. Got to be an MP for a couple of months. The 12 hour shifts sucked but there were other unofficial perks that were nice.
@27 SGT E, I hear you, but a lot of the work done now by civilian contractors used to be done by military and they still had time for training.
An example is a civilian contractor getting a massively funded (several billion dollars) to do supply logistics that could be done directly, and at lower cost, by the military dealing directly with producers and manufacturers.
Dealing directly is how it used to be done, and now it’s done by 3rd parties, which are more costly because they build in a profit share for themselves.
We’ve been heading towards this for months. When sequestration hit in January most of the contracted gate guard disappeared overnight. The MPs always shared the duty, but it was only about 20%. Now I only see a couple contractors out of the several dozen soldiers at the gate. Units are tasked to provide manpower to help the MPs on a rotational basis (a 30 day duty). Units that are in the prime of their training cycle are exempt from these duties. Any other base support tasks will likely follow this model. Soldiers are expected to mow the grass around their units while DPW does the larger common areas. I don’t eat in the DFAC very often, but the one for our brigade is 100% staffed by army cooks. Our training tends to go in cycles where nothing critical is happening for a couple months, then we’re in the field for a few weeks. It’s not like a soldier will forget how to perform his MOS because he got tagged with gate guard for a few weeks.
I thought Niccolo Machiavelli expounded upon the risks of using contractors rather elegantly in his treatise, “The Prince.”
@35: That may be true, but also consider that the military was much, much bigger back then. Not only that, during the draft era it was staffed by lots of non-career types who were only there to fulfill their legal obligation so working them outside their MOS wasn’t a big deal.
If your TO&E has 2 radio operators, and because of the draft you’ve got 4 (one transitioning in, two in the slot and one transitioning out) then working two of them in the chow hall or the post gym isn’t a big deal. But when your TO&E has two radio operators and you’ve only got one, tasking that one to mow the grass means that you’ve lost that capability for the time being.
WRT the size of the military, consider that when I was in Germany in the late 80’s, there were about as many US troops in Germany alone (~400,000) as there are in the entire US Army today, when we’re actually at war.
Final note: Even with all the contractors the US military uses, there are still plenty of extra duties for Joe to do. Cleaning up the company area has never, AFAIK, been contracted out, at least not in CONUS (we did have “Hajis” that cleaned up the camp in Afghanistan, although they were not allowed in the tents where personnel slept or kept their personal gear.) CQ and Staff Duty certainly aren’t contracted out nor is funeral detail. So don’t get the idea that we are talking about routine military duties, we are talking about things like spending a month pasting targets at a rifle range when a soldier should be training for war.