Sailors don’t trust the Navy
AW1Ed sends a link to the Military Times in which we learn that for some odd reason, sailors don’t trust the navy to act in their interests anymore;
Respondents also had a problem with ongoing discussions to reduce sailor pay and benefits, the survey found. As many as 80 percent rank the current retirement system and 74 percent rank pay and compensation as two of the most important reasons to remain in uniform.
About 63 percent of respondents said they believe it would be easy to get hired if they left the Navy.
What was striking to survey officials was how few sailors strived to earn more senior positions in the Navy. Nearly 50 percent of survey respondents said they did not want their boss’ job.
“The comments indicate an increasing belief that positions of senior leadership, specifically operational command, is less desirable because of increasing risk aversion, high administrative burden and, in some cases, a pay inversion where commanding officers are paid up to 10-percent less than the mid-career officers they lead,” the survey states.
Well, this is a complete surprise. I mean, everything being constant, shouldn’t reduced pay and reduced retirement options have no effect on retention? That’s what the pointy-headed doinks at the Pentagon tell me.
Category: Navy
Shocked. Shocked I tell you.
No surprise, no surprise at all. Nope. Saw it in the 1970s, and later in the 1990s when Clinton was in office.
Why would anyone stick with an employer who promises stuff and doesn’t deliver?
One of many reasons I got out
NO SHIT … really? [/sarcasm]
I bet if they polled lower enlisted members from all the services they’d come up with the same thing.
Not enough shipboard pine cones?
In other news, water is wet.
And when I was in, an E-4 or even an E-3 made more than I did as a junior E-6.
How? Simple. They were married. I wasn’t.
Quality of life has a lot to do with it too. 8-9 month deployments, 300+ days a year at sea even if not deployed, shipyard, SRA, preparing for the next inspection (it’ll get better after ORSE!–remember that one, nukes?)
After a while, the pay and SRB are the only things worth staying in for, and when those are threatened…
They are probably piggy backing off of this unofficial survey that was completely released this month.
http://www.dodretention.org/results/
Which has the same results. That no one has trust in seniors to do the right thing, that social mission creep is inhibiting primary mission abilities, that the new platforms that the 5 sided wind tunnel pushes are wastes of money and unsafe.
“5 sided wind tunnel.”
That’s a good one.
Personally, I prefer “Five-Sided Asylum” when referring to the
PentagramPentagon. But that works, too.http://www.scribd.com/doc/238226030/2014-Navy-Retention-Study-Report-Executive-Summary
“Key Findings
Sailors are most likely to leave uniformed service because of a perception of increasingly high operational tempo, poor work/life balance, low service-wide morale, declining pay and compensation, waning desire to hold senior leadership positions, and a widespread distrust of senior leadership, all of which erodes loyalty to the institution.”
The part about officers not wanting to be stuck with operational command was the real meat of the survey.
That’s not some junior swabbie bitching about mess cranking. That’s senior LTs and LCDRs realizing that getting stuck as a CO is a good way to have your career come crashing down in disgrace.
The respondents look at their bosses and see people not prepping for war, but fighting the bureaucracy and red tape, forced to deal with the social engineering imposed on the operational Navy by the institutional Navy and civilian leadership.
The LTs and LCDRs know that if they wanted to wallow in PC battles, they could just get a job in academia.
Wow! Uncertainty is part of the bargain with command. When I was a CO, my boss told me that if you don’t get at least one congressional you’re not doing your job right.
If an officer conducts themselves with honor, courage and commitment they won’t have a problem. The problems start when a skipper things a command pin is license to act like an idiot.
MustangCryppie: what you say in your second para used to be the case. But I’m not sure it’s particularly true anymore.
From my perspective, there certainly seems to be a willingness of many very senior people in military/DoD leadership these days to take a “my way or the highway” attitude – and to use their lower-level commanders as scapegoats when top-driven asininity doesn’t work. And most of those individuals also IMO seem to love shooting the messenger bearing bad news.
These days an officer / SNCO must conduct themselves with butt-kissery, agreeance, fear their career will end so they can’t mess up, and committment to their Rater.
There’s much less “Fuck you this is my company, I’m accomplishing the mission successfully, go away Sir” going on than before. The capability to micromanage is multiplied these days and they are doing that.
Wait the government is taking a giant shit on personnel in the military and those personnel are leaving for the private sector because if they’re going to get shit on at least they like to define their own terms?
Wow, imagine that a group of strong, independent thinkers doing what the military trained them to do…analyze a bad situation and develop an effective plan to overcome the situation.
Sometimes walking away is the best message you can send.
Yep. And if you think it’s bad now, just wait until the economy actually does begin to improve substantially.
While this doesn’t surpise me. For the Army Side of the house it’s a little different. In the last 6 months, I have spent more time attending EO/SHARP/MRT briefs of all shapes and sizes telling me EXACTLY THE SAME THING… than I have been to a range and shot my weapon. That is terribly wrong.
Commanders are more worried about AR 350-1 requirements than they are actual training. When I am doing SHARP briefs in between shifts in the field, that is ridiculous.
And right now they are cutting ammunition allocations, so you actually have to FIGHT to get more ammo for training.
I work in a 3-shop and have to continually fight with higher about getting ammunition for 5 companies to TRAIN with. I regularly get back “well, they already qualified this year, so I don’t know if you can have anymore ammo.” As if qualification is actually TRAINING.
In the last 5 years it seems like mandatory training requirements have quadrupled. “Take this class so I can say you were trained and it wasn’t my fault as a leader you were dumb.”
Just like with the reflective belt thing. “Why don’t you have your reflective belt on right now????” “Because we’re in the gym / on the grass and not running anywhere.” “Bullshit! You need to put that on right now!” (Yes, I’ve had that conversation more than once.)
I would say this is the same thing in the Army. There are more and more command positions being offered to people and being turned down. Why? Because its not worth it. At least in the 90s, when they reduced the military, they offered options to people. “If you get out now with 15 years, we’ll give you six figures to walk away.” Right now they are doing massive QSPs, QMPs, not providing options to reenlist or continue service, etc. I would also say those QSP/QMP boards are being told “Look, if they don’t have a Silver Star, or something to that effect, they aren’t good enough to stay.” All in all, we’ve turned back into a “Zero Tolerance” Military where if you make a mistake or do anything someone higher up doesn’t like, your career is over. Then, you get kicked out before you hit that magic number of 20 and don’t get jack shit. (Especially harsh since they’re QMPing people at 15+ years prior to hitting 20 who will just be ETS’d with no retirement at all, even for one “fair” evaluation.) So what happens? Same as has happened time and time again. Holes will be filled by incompetent people who are the last option and troops will suffer because of it. Why? Because there are less “true options” to fill green-tab positions. And just like we see now, troops don’t trust higher ups. Why? Because in a lot of cases, they don’t deserve the position. Ohhhhh, on paper they walk on water. Those evals/sitreps are magic. But when they actually step up to the job, its a whole different story. When they get into the position, its just about them being in the position. Our Commanding General actually put out guidance saying, “Don’t worry about personnel issues, they’ll get fixed when we hit the SRC to deploy. Don’t worry about equipment you don’t have, you’ll get it downrange. Training is the number 1 priority, it comes first.” But then, his staff inundates units with every administrative requirement under the sun. “Don’t forget to do this mandatory class,… Read more »
Geezo pete, it sounds like the 1970s all over again.