The manpower costs, and costs associated with manpower are well understood by DoD. But fewer people on the job has it’s costs as well, which is evidenced by the Fitzgerald accident.
You make a note about the cost of manpower being over blown. But even with the over blown model, DoD can’t recruit the people it needs, or the quality it needs without the benefits that you have concern with. If someone could cut benefits and pay and get better quality and quantity of people, I’m sure that SecDef is all ears.
I mean to say that the total cost of ownership of a single DoD member is large. When you take the current headcount times that number, and add in the promised retirement benefits of the fairly predictable fraction who’ll retire, it’s a very big number. Then there’s the current retirees times their benefit costs.
When added to the ballooning cost of hardware, the total is more than the public and politicians are willing to vote for. Compared to modern industrial / business practice that uses relatively few workers and offers stingy or no retirements, the DoD can see it’s behind the times in getting “manpower efficient”.
So IMO that’s what they’re trying to do.
Whether it’s a good idea and whether they’re doing it skillfully is a separate set of issues.
Last of all, the DoD is in danger of getting into the same sort of budgetary spiral that e.g. GM or Ford got into after their heyday was over. An ever-swelling group of retirees had to be supported by the ever-shrinking supply of workers making cars. Eventually it overwhelmed both companies, albeit only in the face of an external crisis.
In DoD’s case the problem isn’t that current soldiers have to generate revenue to support retired soldiers. But rather as the retiree cadre grows and gets longer lived, an ever shrinking share of the DoD’s budget can be applied to current workers in either headcount or salaries.
We are wandering off topic here, but the problem with both the DoD and GM is that neither planned well enough for retirement costs, not that unexpected ravening hordes of retirees suddenly descended on either organization. In GM’s (any large company’s) case, it was unwilling to cut into profits enough to save what it had promised the workers. In the DoD case, yes, it’s that politicians are plenty happy to praise our warriors to the skies and much less happy to vote for taxes to pay them what they’re due.
[One more comment then I’ll stop my end of the hijack :D]
DoD’s manpower costs are increasing. But how much of a problem that is, is somewhat debatable.
DoD’s portion of the federal budget isn’t increasing. It’s a target, but it’s not breaking the budget. Non-DoD entitlements are. If entitlements weren’t increasing at the rate they have been, this DoD cost wouldn’t be an issue.
I also think that DoD and GM aren’t comparable. GM’s labor costs weren’t tied to it’s inability to capture a work force. They were tied to unions. (Not saying unions are bad.) GM could find workers willing to work for GM.
DoD can’t find workers. We can’t find them, and we can’t retain them, so we offer bonuses. When unemployment increases, DoDs bonuses decrease accordingly. It’s very flexible that way.
Here is a problem that’s happening right now. The airline industry is seeing unprecedented retirement of airline pilots due to mandatory retirements. The Air Force is looking at $100,000 bonuses per year for some pilots. And you know what? They are confident that the $100k won’t be enough! So what is DoD to do? We are looking at creative ways around this, but it’s an increasing small market to draw from, as fewer and fewer people want to join DoD.
Who would want to join the military in peacetime? The rewards aren’t that great, the work is pretty boring in the main, and even in peacetime there is a greater than zero chance that you can get killed or maimed. When employment rates are high in the country, and the kind of young people that the military want are being snapped up by the civilian recruiters, it gets tough to find the right people.
One problem is that military spending on hardware and support services, is propping up the economies of places that have influence in the legislature, so there is little will to downsize.
The link doesn’t say they were removed from the military, just relieved of command. They’re still very much a part of the military, the better to court martial them.
Court martials are for crimes. What crimes do you suppose they committed?
These are examples of firing from a job, pure and simple. With the confusing-to-civilians overlay that being booted from a position doesn’t leave the bootee unemployed or unpaid; it just leaves them with nothing to do until a different and less challenging job in the bureaucracy is found for them.
All the people at these ranks have sufficient years of service to be immediately eligible to voluntarily retire. Some will take that option, some won’t. Some might be “encouraged” to do so.
I am reminded of something that happened here many years ago. A large manufacturing plant was strongly and militantly unionised. They wanted to make a group redundant but the union wouldn’t countenance the idea; threatening strike action. The “redundant” workers remained employed and paid, but were given a comfortable room to sit in but no work. At first, they were happy to be paid for doing nothing, but after a few weeks, most of them had accepted the package they were offered and left. I believe that two or three sat it out for several months before quietly resigning.
You can’t get a court-martial for violation of a UCMJ article? Like, dereliction of duty?
Any ways, on to them being relieved of command, if they still have time left on their contract they can’t just “leave” the military. You have to serve the time you committed too, there is no way out unless you want to be a fugitive. That being said, some positions are appointed ones. I believe O7 is as high as one can go and the others after that are based on the role one assumes. When you are finished with that role, unless the next one requires you to be an O8 or O9 or O10, you drop back down to O7. Also, they might keep them in to drop them rank so their retirement reflects that rank. There was a high-ranking officer on a base here that did something and they kept him in as he had three years or so left, so, he was dropped down to O7 from his higher, appointed position, and his retirement was to reflect that.
After the first tour, unless you have been paid a bonus or have an educational payback, there is no “contact” for Officers. You can leave just about any time you’d like. Sure if you’re in the middle of a deployment, or just PCS’ed the military may keep you for a time, but there is no “contract” for Officers.
I have no idea where this concept of being “appointed” comes from either. If you are promoted to O-7, you’re an O-7. If you’re promoted to O-10, you’re an O-10 and retire as such. There is no “appointment” and no automatic “dropping.” Also if you’re senior (i.e. a flag Officer) and you are relieved for cause, there is no “keeping you around because you have years left.” There are caps on the number of flags, and the number of each senior ones. The Services don’t have the latitude to keep these Officers around just because. You are told to retire and you do so, more or less immediately. All of these flags know the deal - when the Service Chief tells you to go you go.
Seems to be correct about no contract, just that initial obligation and one submits for resignation, which is a process and normally not a problem. I would say that ones resignation would not be accepted if related to said events. Nope, those guys aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Looking at the Rules for Court-Martial, and the Navy JAG site, very possible for an Officer to go through a General Court Martial. Obviously, there is a process involved such as gathering evidence and such. Would they go for court-martial for say, missing movement or being late too many times to work? No. But, this concerns loss of life and this isn’t just one person that died with one grieving family, the count is to seventeen.
I’ll see if I can find the story in regards to the Army officer that was kept in until his rank dropped. But, do notice that I provided branch specific references.
I really don’t see these flag Officers and the O-6 being court-martialed.
You link to Enlisted guys guilty of assault and drug use. There is a long way from “loss of confidence” to dereliction of duty. None of these Officers were in command of the ships. None of these Officers took affirmative action that resulted in the loss of life. These men, who all hoped to continue on in their career (save for the VADM who had a retirement date) and be promoted one or more times are done with the Navy. They will stay in active duty until the investigation is over and they will then retire. I’d guess within 6 months at the most.
No their punishment is that their career is over, and over under a cloud. And the realization that Sailors died under their watch
Eons ago my teenage brother proposed that all public assistance come with an attendance requirement.
IOW, if you applied for “welfare” of any form you had to appear every day at a prepared government waiting room and sign in and out with some biometric fraud-proof system. If you did 40 hours in the room that week you got your check. If not, not.
It’d be pleasant enough surroundings with ordinary auditorium chairs, adequate lighting, air conditioning / heat, etc. But zero entertainment. So just like awaiting jury duty.
This was pre-internet & pre-mobile phones, so his assumption was that anyone coming in would carry at most a dead-tree book or mag for entertainment. Nowadays we’d jam mobile coverage and have the in-room Wi-Fi restricted to accessing only the agency’s job listings and calling the emergency number (911/111/etc.).
His contention was that this restriction would impose the same cost/benefit analysis on the unemployed as is already applied to the employed: your time needs to be worth less than they pay you in order for you to choose to show up. He also believed that the reduction in number of takers would more than pay for the facilities & monitoring needed to implement the policy for the few who stuck it out.
Clearly this has all the faults of typical teenage social engineering: when there are no jobs the people are screwed. But it certainly sounds attractive at first hearing.
Hmm, UK employment law is not US employment law, however with that caveat, the idea of sitting an employee in a room with no activity at all would be one of the very few situations where the employee can walk out and subsequently claim for ‘constructive dismissal’ Even compelling staff to undertake activity that is not commensurate to staff grade can be a problem unless there are specific reasons for doing so - such as redundancy avoidance.
Constructive dismissal is very difficult to prove, but it any organisation as a policy - even unwritten but active in practice - of treating its employees in this way then they would not only lose and have to compensate the worker, there is a strong possibility of breaching employment law and hence a criminal case
All of this having been said, in the original context, military employment practices aren’t impeded by such niceties. One hypothetically viable way to terminate the employment of an undesired employee would be to send them into suicidal combat, after all.
A job that can reasonably demand you die isn’t really bound up by considerations of legal rights and liability. Especially you can’t sue your chain of command.
I saw that last night and I’m not really sure what to make of it.
Are there problems there? I’d guess so. The worst ship in the history of the Navy? Nope.
Duty on Navy ships is really, really difficult. Long hours, hard work, not a lot of sleep, underway a lot. Compound that with Shiloh being homeported in Japan and it gets even less attractive.
The surveys of ships are usually bad (and I understand that this survey is worse than the previous one). And universally, the best surveys come from the new ships (less maintenance) in the best homeports such as Newport (when it was open) San Diego and Pearl. When I was a division Officer, I had my butt reamed hard on one survey, but I had the most difficult division to be in (boilers). 18 months later I have the best survey on the ship, but I had the easiest division (ASW) with the best quality of life. I didn’t miraculously become the best lieutenant in the fleet overnight. Some of it is just the job, or the ship.
I just don’t think that the average person understands how difficult it is to serve on a Navy ship.